GreenBlue Urban’s Head of Public Relations & Strategic Partnerships, Charlotte Markey, recently had the privilege of traveling to Bruges, Belgium with a member of the Natural Infrastructure Team from Plymouth City Council. Together they met collaborators from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to discuss an EU Interreg project which focuses specifically on communities in what the EU defines as the ‘2 Seas’ area.
This includes the regions of:
- England: South-West, South-East and East of England
- France: Departments of Nord, Pas de Calais, Somme and Aisne
- Belgium (Flanders): Provinces of West-Flanders, East-Flanders and Antwerp
- The Netherlands: Province of Zeeland and the coastal areas of the Provinces of Zuid-Holland, Noord-Holland and Noord-Brabant
The main objectives of the project are to improve the capacity of cities in this area to adapt to heavy rainfall events, through innovative and creative LID / SUDs solutions in a retrofit context. One of the key focuses of the SUDs interventions would be to deliver schemes in constrained public spaces which would deliver societal benefits as well as saving public money through cost effective design and implementation.
Through establishing larger networks to facilitate knowledge exchange between private and public sector partnerships, our aim is to provide transferable and replicable solutions which will be multifunctional, providing the essential ecosystems services to the urban environments into which they are integrated.
