Welcome to the website of ‘Brown to Green’ project.
Our research is dedicated to harnessing the values and priorities of citizens in shaping the vision and progress of post-industrial waterfront revitalisation. We have a particular focus on the transformation of the coastal towns in North and South Tyneside in the UK.
It searches for innovative planning solutions for revitalisation of economically and environmentally challenged coastal towns, with an emphasis on creating a green and thriving urban riverfront.
Introduction
Reviving neglected waterfront areas has been a focal point of academic inquiry since the 1970s, spanning across North America and Europe. Subsequently, this urban agenda has garnered global attention. As numerous prior studies have underscored, waterfront spaces possess intrinsic worth for development due to their unique interface between the natural environment and human activities (Garello et al., 2002; Rogers, 2011).
The research centres on the post-industrial riverside neighbourhoods of South Tyneside and North Tyneside. The process of industrialisation along the River Tyne was subsequently followed by similarly intensive tendencies towards deindustrialisation in the first half of the 1990s, resulting in a significant abandonment of industrial sites and the emergence of a vast number of brownfields along the river.
The project aims to utilise co-designed data-gathering technologies to provide people from local communities with options to participate in the planning and design of their neighbourhoods. This will concentrate on four interconnected research objectives:
(1) understand the major environmental issues facing coastal towns, including reuse of brownfield land, effects of climate change, and flooding;
(2) support social inclusion to empower community involvement in the planning and change of local neighbourhoods;
(3) co-design potential solutions to reinvent existing urban infrastructure and post-industrial relics to adapt to 21st-century social and ecological challenges;
(4) design and develop a new paradigm to facilitate citizen participation in social-ecological planning and to support community involvement in the forming of future planning policies and decisions.
Case Study: How Gdańsk is reclaiming its industrial waterfront
The Baltic port city of Gdańsk, in Poland, showcases how cities can return their waterfronts to residents. It is about restoring the landscape and mitigating the negative ecological impacts associated with former port and industrial land use.
Two Sides of the River Tyne
South Shields town centre and riverside are undergoing significant regeneration, with new housing, business, retail and leisure uses replacing old industrial sites.
The town centre offers high street shopping, a regular market by the Grade I listed old town hall, a new library and exhibition space called The Word, and the cross-river pedestrian ferry to North Shields.
The Customs House is located within the historic Mill Dam conservation area and hosts a theatre, cinema, art gallery and restaurant. The car park area will deliver cultural-related uses which complement the use and setting of the Customs House.
Harton Quay will deliver a mixed-use residential, commercial and hotel development with ancillary food and drink offer which builds on the distinctive characteristics of Mill Dam Conservation Area.
Holborn Middle Dock and Windmill Hill will deliver a mixed-use residential and office development. Development proposals shall include the creation of a new promenade that allows public access to the riverside area.
North Shields is on the northern bank of the River Tyne, opposite to South Shields on the other bank. In September 2020 and January 2021, the North Tyneside Council published prospective plans for the regeneration of the town centre, which include developing a distinctive route to the Fish Quay, pedestrianisation of key streets, consolidation of retail units, creation of a town square, renovation of Northumberland Square and the establishment of a transport hub.
The proposals address the connectivity issues, creating a safe, interesting gateway to Fish Quay and beyond whilst also creating a destination that maximises the key opportunities of the area, including the views of the River Tyne. The Fish Quay, at present, has direct connections to Tynemouth to the East, but the future plan shows the potential for improving elements of the existing pedestrian route to make the journey shorter or more accessible.
Dr. Jiayi Jin
Prof. Richard Laing
The Research Team
Jiayi (Jennifer) Jin is a Senior Lecturer of Architecture at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment (DABE), Northumbria University. Email Jiayi: jiayi.jin@northumbria.ac.uk
Richard Laing is a Professor of Urban Collaboration at the DABE, Northumbria University. Email Richard: richard.laing@northumbria.ac.uk
Jiayi and Richard lead the operation and delivery of the project.
Dr. Clare Rumsey
Mingyu Zhu
Clare Rumsey is the Technical Director of Omanos Analytics. Email Clare: clare@omanosanalytics.org
Mingyu Zhu is the Research Assistant for this project. Email Mingyu: m.zhu14@newcastle.ac.uk
Clare and Mingyu engage in the app development and data analytics phases of this research, leveraging their past experience in urban data collection and simulation.
Project Partners
Omanos Analytics is a Glasgow-based space technology start-up delivering space data knowledge to support sustainable development. The firm combines downstream satellite data analysis with community intelligence and other ground data sources to identify and monitor the social and environmental impacts of critical infrastructure projects, in order to provide verified, accessible, and inclusive insights into the realities on the ground. Omano’s agile data products are built on a combination of automated and human analysis, designed to be accessible and actionable in different contexts, from legal arbitration, to policy design, to advocacy.
Based near Newcastle on the River Tyne in North East England, Port of Tyne is one of UK’s most innovative and efficient deep-sea ports handling cargoes across five continents. As the major employer and economic engine of the region, the Port set a series of visions for its Tyne 2050 targets including growing and developing the business and regional economic prosperity, improving health, well-being and education of people in the region of all ages, developing an inclusive and diverse workforce, and minimising the environmental impact and achieve net zero green gas emissions by 2030
'Brown-to-Green' Regeneration Projects with Design-Led Approaches
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The Word / National Centre for the Written Word
The site for The Word is an extremely prominent gateway to the town centre. It provides a strong link between the Ferry Terminal and South Shields town centre and serves to link the riverside character area with the town centre and historically important market place in South Shields.
Granton Waterfront Regeneration
This is the creation of a £1.3bn well-connected, sustainable new coastal town at Granton Waterfront in Edinburgh, developed by Smith Scott Mullan in collaboration with C.F. Møller Architects. The project serves as a blueprint for the Capital’s 20-minute neighbourhood model.
Riverside Sunderland:
This masterplan sets out the revival of a 33.2 hectare site adjacent to the city centre and spanning both sides of the River Wear. Drawing on the dramatic industrial silhouette of the past, the masterplan creates a new distinctive edge profile to both banks of the River reinstating the city edge.
Tileyard North at Rutland Mills
Rutland Mills is the final piece in a ten-acre regeneration masterplan that is breathing new life into Wakefield’s riverside. The plan converts the space into a mixed-use, inclusive, creative, and cultural cluster with world-class facilities of a 135,000 sq ft creative industries hub, the UK’s largest outside London.
Processes
Pathway 1: Collective Story Building
1-1 Bringing together people to establish partnerships with local authorities, industrial and community partners, as well as stakeholders, in their quest for a transformative path toward the ‘Brown to Green’ transition along the River Tyne.
1-2 Gaining valuable insights from Architects and Urban Planners who have extensive experience in project design and delivery within this domain. These insights will help us navigate the implementation and adoption of planning regulations, policies, financing, and government initiatives that prioritise people-centric and sustainable regeneration in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
1-3 Comprehending the prominent environmental challenges confronting two coastal towns by conducting archival research, analysing GIS and satellite imagery data, with a specific focus on critical aspects such as land cover and the revitalisation of brownfield sites, the impacts of climate change, and the occurrence of flooding.
Pathway 2: Data-driven Scenario Building
2-1 Through our partnership with Omanos Analytics, we are in the process of creating a collaborative smartphone application. This app empowers individuals to express their opinions and actively participate in the enhancement of their neighbourhoods. Participants can simply take a photo, respond to questions, or create collages to contribute ideas for improvement. All these insights are consolidated on the platform, enabling people to interact and expand upon these ideas collectively.
2-2 Focusing on 6 essential aspects –living, working, grocery shopping, education, healthcare and self-development in local neighbourhoods, a series of cross-disciplinary creative workshops will be led by the team to establish opportunities to collect meaningful local intelligence to the green transition, with social and ecological interpretations.
This iterative process allows for experimentation, demonstration, refinement, and ultimately the identification of practical solutions that address the unique waterfront planning and design needs of the involved entities.
Pathway 3: Investment and Partnership Building
3-1 Developing a strategic framework rooted in the values and daily routines of individuals. This framework is embodied in a co-creation toolkit, emphasising a people-centred approach to revitalising neglected spaces along the river. And the goal is to seamlessly integrate these spaces into the smart neighbourhood model while promoting socio-ecological-spatial justice.
3-2 Establishing a collaborative investment and partnership pathway to bring together all necessary components for Tyneside’s development of investment models that align with their waterfront regeneration & local plans, and the broader ecosystem.
This process adopts a comprehensive perspective and seeks to mitigate investment risks, enabling both local towns to document and encompass the diverse values within their intricate systems.
Key achievement & activities delivered so far
1. Co-creation of a participatory app with Omanos Analytics, leveraging Mergin Maps / Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) technology.
2. Collaborative visual representations of urban futures with inputs from local residents using ArkiCity.
3. Integrating downstream satellite data analysis with local community data sources to generate a multi-layered, map-based dataset on PPGIS.
4. Establishment of local partnerships with authorities, industries, community partners and stakeholders to advance the 'Brown to Green' transition along the River Tyne.
5. Continuously integrating data-informed policies into council-wide services.
6. Continuously engaging with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Young Architectural Practitioner's Forum (YAPF) to transform research into urban practice.
7. Preparation and submission of academic publications.
Contact
If you want to get in touch you can reach us on the project’s email: browntogreen@northumbria.ac.uk