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Greenstructure and
Urban Planning - Case Study - Sheffield, UK - Greenstructure
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The greenstructure pattern: its historical evolution and its influence on quality of life and biodiversity levels across the city To understand the greenstructure of the city of Sheffield - why there is so much greenspace and the location of that space - it is necessary to understand how Sheffield expanded from a group of dispersed villages into a major industrial city and to recognise the role that topography and the linked stream and river system have had in limiting and directing that growth and therefore shaping the present city and its greenspaces. Figure 1 - Sheffield built up area and greenspace - the brown areas to the west are the higher areas of land and most are open moorlands (heathland). Woodlands are shown in dark green. © Anne R. Beer 1998
In Britain, in pre-industrial times, at the latitude on which Sheffield lies (38 degrees north), villages were rarely built above 150m above mean sea level. This was due to the inclement winter conditions and the relatively low fertility of the soils on the upland areas. However, from the early 19th century onwards, with the increasing use and transportability of fossil fuels and better building materials, and industrialisation itself, this limitation on the land areas considered suitable for development was gradually abandoned. In the case of Sheffield it was only in the 20th century, particularly from the 1930s onwards, that housing estates began to appear above this height and even now most housing areas are below 200m., although many are in exposed hill top positions not conducive to sustainable use of energy. By the 1700s there was a substantial market town on the site of the present city centre (Figure 2). This prospered as a trading place for the metal worked in many small manufacturing sites, which were built to use the power of the streams and rivers that flowed from the uplands in the west down into the major valley of the River Don). The metal working skills of the area (these go back to Roman times in this part of Britain) are an important reason for the growth of Sheffield as an industrial city. When steam power was introduced in the late 18th century production moved from the water mills along the valleys into factories built on the flat land alongside the River Don. At this stage Sheffield's rapid growth began. Initially industry in Sheffield in the 19th century was mainly concerned with the production of cutlery. However, entrepreneurs realised that the skills needed for this could be applied to the production of parts for machines and demand for this boomed throughout the world, with industrialisation and the use of steam power. By the late 19th century Sheffield had become the steel production centre of Britain. A result of the very fast growth from 1801 to 1931 was that housing had developed haphazardly. Much of that specifically built for workers was in appalling condition, often having been built near to the factories and at very high densities without proper sanitation.
Figure2 - Sheffield - growth from 1700 to 1945 indicating the 1930s administrative boundary of the city
The major components of the greenstructure that relate to the natural environment are the steep sided valleys of the river system, the river bottoms, the moorlands and the woodlands. This basic structure has been supplemented by the addition of areas of land gifted to the city for public parks in the late 19th century and the areas of land set aside as official public open space by the planning process from the 1930s to the present - see below.
The evolution of Sheffield's greenspace system prior to 1914 The greenspace corridor system The present day greenstructure of the City can be seen as a pattern that has evolved in response to the local physical environment. This basic greenstructure forms a web of linked greenspace corridors that lead into the surrounding moorland to the west and north of the city and to agricultural land to the south and east. Much of this basic greenstructure is very rich in wildlife and for an urban area this means that the greenspaces support relatively high levels of biodiversity. Wildlife can migrate freely along these corridors in search of suitable habitats and even deer have been seen where the green corridors penetrate the city centre and the industrial areas. Sheffield - local greenspace prior to 1880 Prior to 1880 there were few public gardens in Sheffield. Gardens such as the Botanical Gardens (1833) had been opened up as fee paying parks for better off members of society. But in this period everyone lived within a 10 to 15 minute walk of open land and many families still grew their own food on family plots - so in Sheffield at least the masses were not far from clean air and open spaces. Figure 3 - Sheffield
1855 - unbuilt greenspaces just to the west of the city
centre By 1880, however, all the "gardens" shown in this map were built over, mainly by terraced housing. Much of this housing is still standing and in use today. As more and more land became built over, access to gree open land became more difficult and so a potential health problem was identified and prominent members of society began to donate "parks " for the use of the masses, for their recreation and health. Sheffield had developed a major air quality problem by the middle of the 19th century due to the lie of the land and the dirty air being trapped in the valley bottoms. By the mid 1800s the better off began to leave the city centre and move uphill above the dirty air. It was another 100 years before all the poorer people also moved uphill. Conditions for the mass of workers were as appalling in Sheffield as anywhere in Britain by the 1860s. The housing conditions remained bad until the 1950s, when the last of the back to back slums were demolished. There is little workers' housing remaining from the period prior to 1880 when building regulations came in to ensure a reasonable mimimal standard of construction. However, few of the 1880 to 1914 houses for the workers had much garden space and the houses were built so close together that it was diffucult for trees to grow even along the streets. In such areas, greenspace is even today restricted to small corners and is often located where a building has been demolished. Some areas of the city where the 1880s to 1910s workers' housing still stands have been improved and, for instance, where they are near the universities the quality of life is accepted as good. However, in other parts of the city a spiral of decay has set in (eg Burngreaver) and what are basically the same houses in structural terms have been rejected by their inhabitants. They are now occupied by some of the poorest people in the city - people who cannot afford to carry out the needed maintenance. There is often a dearth of greenspace near the houses in these parts of the city and during the regeneration projects which operate in these areas, efforts are made to enhance the outdoor spaces and to add local greenspace.
Photo 1 - Sheffield, Crookes - dense housing built for the more affluent workers towards the end of the 19th century - this housing is now very popular with students and first time buyers. There have been several infill developments in recent decades. The large trees are in gardens or alnong roads and do much to give the area its special character.The greenland at the front of the picture was cleared of slums in the 1950s.
Photo 2 - Sheffield, Crookes - the row housing is mixed with detached and semi-detached - this mix and the way the housing sits on the slope creates an interesting townscape. Note the small front gardens in this type of housing. The wall to the right is an old farm boundary and the trees are the same era as the houses - 1880s to 1900s. The maldistribution of greenspace in the city dates from this time when the relatively poor were left to live in and around the town centre and those that could afford it moved uphill to the greener north and west, and to the fresh air there. Greenspace in pre 1914 middle class housing areas Greenspace was not generally provided in British cities as part of building housing estates for the less affluent prior to the 1920s. There are of course some exceptions, as when benevolent people built almshouses round lawned areas, or when investors built housing round a fenced off communal garden, as in the Bloomsbury area of London in the late 18th to early 19th century, or when landowners built housing for their agricultural tenants and often provided them with an adjacent plot of land on which to grow vegetables and keep chickens. In Sheffield the pre 1914 development of the Ranmoor area which was for the better off middle class of the city has had the effect of creating a spectacular urban environment now that the trees have grown. Characteristically these areas were laid out with high walls around substantial gardens - they were designed for the new rich of Sheffield. Many of the smaller houses are still in use as domestic dwellings. However, the large dwellings are too big for single families and now have other uses - schools, nursing homes, offices, apartments. The survival of the buildings has ensured that a special urban landscape has developed and it is only now, with the pressures to increase density, that the features that make that landscape are under threat.
Photo 5 and 6 - Sheffield, Ranmoor - St Marie's School - over time the largest houses have had their gardens subdivided and built over to provide school buildings and in the picture below the gardens have been sealed over to provide a playing pitch. It is always a sad fact that money can be made available to build expensive pitches, but none to maintain the land that was previously there to an adequate level that would have enabled it to function as a far more attractive play experience for young children.
Photo 7 - Sheffield - Oak Brook, Fulwood Road As these housing areas developed the smaller streams that ran through the land became cut off in people's gardens. Over time these have become important areas for biodiversity within the City. Parks and greenspace gifted to the city In addition to the
valley system greenspaces another major component of the
greenstructure is those areas of land gifted by wealthy
industrialists. This category of greenspace is now mainly
formal parkland. They consist of areas of land which were
given under a legal covenant to ensure that they were only
used by the city as open space and could not be built over
without a special Act of Parliament.
The category also includes land specifically bought to give to the City Council for the use of its inhabitants:
Figure 4 - Sheffield - Endcliffe Park and surroundings - showing tree cover, lawns and gardens -© A.R.Beer 2003
Photo 8 and 9 - The large lawn in Endcliffe Park is not set out with pitches, but is probably more used than any formal playing field in this part of the city - children's teams, informal kickabouts, Saturday morning teams - the whole mix. It is a multi functional park.The space works because it has an excellent sense of place - created by the large mature trees and the woodland on the hill to the other side of the river. The park is very well used throughout the year.
This land, which was gifted to the City, is very variable in the biodiversity it supports, a factor relating to the position of the land in relation to the basic greenstructure described above, its historical use and the way the landscape has been managed. Many of the older parklands, whether designed and built at the end of the 19th century or having evolved from landscapes that are the result of earlier land management regimes by the large landowners, support a relatively high range of plants and wildlife for an urban area, as their tree cover (in the main but not exclusively indigenous deciduous species) has matured and is now at least 120 years old. Biodiversity levels are generally enhanced where the parkland forms part of the river corridor system as in Endcliffe and Bingham Parks, but its full potential to develop a rich flora and fauna has been limited in many cases by the landscape management regimes put in place to keep the parkland "looking tidy" for the users.
The planned open spaces of the 20th century At the time the town planning system began to evolve in the 1930s the maldistribution of open space within the City became apparent. For instance, many of the more densely populated areas of the City had no access to local parks within a quarter of a mile (400m) of dwellings. It was recognised that there was no shortage of open space within the City; it was just not always in the right place. To rectify this the City began to set aside part of the land it was acquiring for housing as open space.
Figure 5 - Sheffield -
Plan for linear and other greenspaces, 1922. The lines of
the proposed linear parks can just be made out on this plan.
It was never formally implemented but the ideas permeated
thinking about the structure of the city after this
date.
Figure 6 - Sheffield -
sketch ideas for the redesign of the river valleys to
emphasise their role as recreational space were drawn up in
the mid 1920s, as can be seen in these diagrams which were
part of the Abercromby plans for the City's
future.
Redo map and add information on the Abercromby Plan for the
city. Figure 7 - Sheffield - 1924 City Plan for Sheffield indicating the pre-1924 parks system and the new parks system. This shows the intention to develop linear parks along the river valleys, leading from the moors in the west down to the built up area around the centre, and the intention to make a series of new "island" parks to ensure that everybody lived within 10 minutes walk of a major open space.
Information to be added about the planning of the newer greenspaces in the east of the City Parks 1930 to 1970 - eg Concord, Parson Cross, Longley ,Langsett and to the south Gleadless and Owlthorpe.
Photos 10-12 Sheffield, Langsett A new park constructed in 1970s
Langsett - new greenspace formed in the 1970s on land cleared of slums in the 1950s
Greenspace in low-density housing estates - private and social housing This move towards a planned provision of open space occurred in the period that the Garden City Movement's ideas were being more widely adopted by British local authorities. The result was that many new social housing estates built in Sheffield from the 1930s to the 1960s were laid out to reflect these ideals. Similarly, although less rigorously, the ideas were applied to the low-density semi-detached estates built for the aspiring middle classes from 1930 to 1980. In both cases, only the idea of providing the areas of land for open space was actually followed; the concept that the spaces should be shaped and landscaped at additional expense to the developer to provide usable attractive open spaces for local inhabitants, seems not to have been fully understood or was ignored.
Figure 8 - Sheffield, Crookes and Crosspool - 1880s to 1910s terraced and semi-detached housing to the north and large houses and well treed gardens to the south. © A.R.Beer 2003
The aim of the new social housing areas was to provide a "modern" environment for the inhabitants; this was perceived as one which would look lushly "green". Away from the city centre, much of this new social housing was built in the form of semi-detached and row houses, with only pockets of high rise housing. Many of these houses, built from 1930 to 1969, had substantial gardens and along the roads a network of grassed corners and verges was laid out. There was no lack of land within these estates which could be regarded as "greenspace"; unfortunately however, the City did not have the money to plant the required landscape structure; if they had been able to do so such areas would look well vegetated by now. An additional problem with trying to implement the idea of the Garden City layout was that the inhabitants of the social housing had no surplus money to buy the plants and trees necessary to transform their large new gardens, and few had the skills necessary to make vegetable or flower gardens. The result was that in many such areas the open ground within the garden was covered in grass and a privet hedge was planted, and little has changed since. The extent of unused and empty grass outside the curtilage of the dwelling (often associated in more recent times with litter) is now understood to have been a factor influencing the perceived rapid deterioration in these "new" housing areas. The so-called "greenspaces" of the low-density housing areas built as social housing remain a problem with which those working on regeneration struggle. Biodiversity levels in these areas understandably remain very low. The necessary levels of complexity in the vegetation structure and type have rarely developed in extensive areas of the City. However, recent work by City officials, volunteer groups and local people is creating " pockets" within the low-density housing where biodiversity levels are fast improving (for example, Stocksbridge and the Manor housing estates). In these areas, local landscape managers work with volunteers and schools' groups using a variety of funding to modify this type of urban landscape. The aim is to make local greenspaces more usable elements in the landscape and as a by-product to enhance urban biodiversity and make local living conditions more sustainable.
The experience of the link between urban biodiversity and the presence of higher levels of biodiversity in the extensive social housing estates of the 1930s to 1960s contrasts greatly with other areas of the City built at the same time at similar densities but for the private market. Here, in those parts of the City where smaller private houses were built in estates by developers (at a density of about 19 dph) the gardens are often of the same size as in social housing of similar density. However, where there has been sufficient affluence since initial development for people to be able to plant their gardens more densely, there has been the opportunity for a much higher level of urban biodiversity to develop. This has allowed a rich flora to develop (often not exclusively indigenous species, but still a mix capable of supporting a wide range of urban wildlife. (See NERC Biodiversity in Urban Gardens project ,1999-2002). It is interesting to note that the "little corners and strips of grass" are much less prevalent in the private housing estates of the period than in the areas built as social housing.
Photo 13 - Sheffield, Fulwood. In the foreground large 1930s houses built by a developer with large gardens. In the background a 1970s development at a much higher density which has precluded the planting of large trees in the vicinity of the houses. However, as the areas of land which are too steep to develop are well wooded, this lack of trees hardly matters. These wooded slopes are privately owned, so again we see a landscape which is being maintained at no cost to the City and yet is lushly green. In Sheffield house prices are far higher in such areas, even when the form of development is exactly the same as in those parts of the City where there are fewer trees.
Photos 14 and 15 Sheffield, examples of 1960s high-density housing. Neither were accepted by the inhabitants. Greenspaces were desolate around the development shown in Photo 14 and added to the drabness - this scheme has been rehabilitated and part of it demolished at the end of the 1990s to allow spaces for new terraced housing. the flates that remained have been given small gardens or communal space with controlled access.
Kelvin flats were built in the 1960s to provide housing for those moved out of the old slum housing around the city centre. There was minimal greenspace adjacent to the building but it was well landscaped. Nearby there were larger expanses of greenspace but these were never adequately designed and money was not available to make them into the type of space the local people might have enjoyed using. These flats were demolished in the 1990s due to the growth of crime within the block and to the costs of bringing them up to modern housing standards. The site is now covered in a dense network of terraced and semi-detached housing with very small gardens; there is little greenspace.
All photographs are © Anne R. Beer, 2003 but users are free to download and use as they wish, with the proviso that the copyright is always acknowledged. Students may use the text as they wish provided they again acknowledge the sources of the text. To view the Case Studies
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