Climate-ready places

This workstream looks to enable historical and heritage built environments to become fit for purpose in the changing climate, for the benefit of their users and of meeting climate targets.

This exploration of retrofit will include:

• mapping current available guidance and scoping the existing policy drivers and hooks that enable or constrain heritage retrofit
• interviews with retrofit and conservation officers from local and combined authorities across Yorkshire
• producing a decision tree guidance document to understand the different routes taken to retrofit heritage and historical buildings
• a listed building case study at Fairfax House, York

Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission are utilising their existing and work streams to support YPIP’s focus on sustainable living in a greener economy.

They will be producing policy papers on:

• Retrofit and health
• Retrofit and relational energy decision-making
• Use of Conservation Areas as proactive planning policies
• Integrated land-use indicators
• Fair and inclusive climate action

YHCC colleagues will also be exploring what support would help communities initiatives adapt to climate risks. This work will be carried out with a stakeholder group of St Nicks and The Green Estate demonstrator projects, and the climate theme projects funded through the Communities Innovating Yorkshire Fund.

This workstream looks to optimise the impacts of land-use change for nature recovery, amenity and climate mitigation, by piloting place-based integration of key policy drivers.

The work package will explore local applications of Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRS) to go from broad regional strategies linked to policies for biodiversity improvements towards identifying specific places in actual neighbourhoods where land use changes can take place:

• evaluating co-design approaches 

• reporting on spatial land-use change scenarios that optimise biodiversity gains, cultural/amenity gains, and climate mitigation; 
• delivering workshops to critique the land-use change options. 

This demonstrator project is utilising existing work and relationships to test and demonstrate the vale of improved knowledge exchange in increasing nature recovery. It will use ‘Wild York’ to demonstrate a model of community-connected nature recovery that may be adapted and applied in other communities.

St. Nicks will be:

• establishing and running the Green Corridors York community of practice
• developing Wild York to be an online resource for data networking, reporting and learning

The Green Estate urban resilience demonstrator project is convening communities to co-design a blueprint for place-based urban resilience and build capacity in growing green and resilient urban areas for people and nature to thrive.

There are three main strands to this project:

Defining and creating a blueprint for place-based urban resilience – a rapid review of existing global definitions of ‘place-based urban resilience’ carried out by researchers at the University of Hull has found that this combination of terms is not widely adopted in theory and practice, with these elements often connected to one another in discussions but rarely under an overarching term of ‘place-based urban resilience’. A working definition of ‘place-based urban resilience’ has been developed as a starting point for future discussions.

Co-designing with the local community to understand what place-based urban resilience means to them – expert Dr Al Mathers is developing and delivering a co-design programme with our local community to tell the ‘Changing Story of Manor Castle Ward’. A community group will come together to discover the past stories of our local Ward, share what’s happening now and what could be the future – members of the group will be community detectives, storytellers and changemakers all rolled into one!

Learning together through showcases and masterclasses to grow green and resilient urban places – showcases and masterclasses are being held to bring together experts, researchers and local community members to explore topics related to place-based urban resilience.