Laura McGinty
Aspects of Green Infrastructure investment.
- Email: l.mcginty2@ncl.ac.uk
Project title
Evaluation and funding of Green Urban Infrastructure
Supervisors
Project description
Green Infrastructure (GI) has grown in prominence in research and practice over the past fifteen years. Its ability to provide effective land use in an increasingly compacted urban landscape is invaluable to solving problems that are growing more commonplace. This is partly due to that changing demand and partly due to our changing climate.
The benefits of green infrastructure are many. They include:
- storm-water management
- regulating urban heat
- improving air quality
- improving social and well-being outcomes.
Much of the literature focuses on the multi-functionality and co-benefits of GI, and there are case studies of very successful uses. But there is a lack of consistency in the tools and methods used in practice for valuing these benefits and co-benefits.
In the current economic climate, finance can be difficult to access. Incorporating aspects of GI into development plans can be difficult to justify and easy to lose to cost cutting. Recent research has:
- investigated finance and funding options
- helped to improve the case for GI investment through better techniques for valuing the benefits
- explored the impacts at different scales
Laura's PhD examines:
- interdependencies associated with GI in an urban context
- methods for valuing GI
- how new or existing business models need to emerge to fund and finance GI