THE CHALLENGE
On the macroscale: well, industrial food systems and climate change!
On the city-scale: providing proactive citizens with a standardised way to start off greening projects on public land.
THE SOLUTION
LOT is a digital platform that enables citizens to claim patches of unused land to start greening projects. LOT works with land owners to list tiny or big land patches leading to co-management and use of green infrastructure at a hyperlocal level. Discover the whole process via a 5 mins video!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I and Astha are very proud of LOT: we presented it at the RCA2020 Graduation Show and we were excited to collect praise from John Thackara, Carolyn Steel and even Tim Brown!
We are even more happy that a community association contacted us to pilot the idea. Stay tuned if you want to hear more about it!
We are even more happy that a community association contacted us to pilot the idea. Stay tuned if you want to hear more about it!
DETAILS
Project partner: Camden Council
When: 2020 - 6 months
Team: 2 people
Main tasks: design research (various), workshop facilitation,
insights definition, proposition design, platform management,
prototyping, stakeholder management
Context
FOOD SYSTEMS IN URBAN PLANNING
Methods:
- literature review
- expert interviews
- collaboration scoping
Green spaces are an integral part of British culture. In the past, it was about Victory Gardens, today it is about a rising interest for biodiverse neighbourhoods.
However, urbanisation massively reduced the space for such endeavours and budget cuts obliged local authorities to give a lower priority to the maintenance of small patches across London, which are mostly enjoyed by locals.
Doctors and academics reaffirm the benefits that green spaces provide to the city in terms of resilience to climate change, food security and health and wellbeing for those who interact actively with them.
The growing interest of citizens in green spaces and biodiversity was evident in several citizen’s assemblies that led Councils across London to formally declare a Climate Emergency.
A woman digging next to the Albert Memorial.
Image by Julia Makra, courtesy RHS.
Research
HOW WE LANDED ON "REPURPOSING"
Methods:
- Role playing
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Ethnographic observation
- Stakeholder management
- Qualitative data reporting and organisation
- On-site interviews
Through our interaction with grassroots initiatives like Think & Do, Company Drinks, Incredible Edible, we found that despite creating a high community engagement they still struggle to reach wider communities.
Using provocative exercises and future scenario mapping, in a multi-stakeholder workshop, that included Camden Council officers and initiative leaders, we understood:
- how land is managed across the departments
- priorities and difficulties of community initiatives
- how budget-cuts impacted how the Council cares for Camden's green areas
- why officers thought to be in need for a land management tool
Furthermore, a range of experts from architects to data scientists helped build our vision of scaling the impact of grassroots initiatives by easing people’s legal access to land in their neighbourhood.
Problem definition
WHOSE IS THIS LAND ANYWAY?
Methods:
- Problem framing
- Journey mapping
- Jobs-to-be-done
- User archetypes
- Social listening
- Literature review
- User interviews
- Expert interviews
With the information we collected during the field research, we encountered mainly 3 entities: local citizens, local authorities, and landlords (essentially Councils). Within these, we mapped user archetypes according to the motivation that brings each of them into our scene.
In particular, we learnt a lot from two user stories. Lou Downe wrote extensively in a blog post about their disadventure with the Hackney Council which, even if declared to be in favour of urban food spaces, scraped Lou's vegetable patch. We have seen a similar cause-effect process in the story of the Bassett Street incident, where an almost 10-year long food growing initiative involving 80 people has been taken down because 5 people from the neighbouring estate complaint.
From these stories, we learnt two main problems:
1. Lack of transparency in land ownership and management models
2. The absence of ways to meet and systematise the citizens' demand causes conflictual views on use of such spaces. The outcomes are bitter relationships and neglected spaces.
Also, GLA's Environment Strategy reiterates the need for new ways to create and maintain green spaces: "The city must become greener whilst it also becomes denser and more compact, bringing under the spotlight the need for new ways to create and maintain green space"
The graphic reppresentation of our stakeholder layering.
The main happenings of Lou's journey.
Solution
LOT: "THIS IS COMMON LAND!"
Methods:
- Storytelling
- Video editing
- Digital platform building
LOT is a land management and co-maintenance platform that leads to de-centralized management and use of green infrastructure at the neighbourhood level. A public digital platform with geo-data of claimable land brings transparency in ownership and land use, thereby improving accessibility and making it inclusive for all digital literates.
FEATURES
- Adopt a lot: Via a digital map, citizens can see the closest spot to them and claim it upon presentation of a deserving project plan.
- A lot to do: On another map, citizens can view ongoing initiatives and find the right fit for them to volunteer.
- A lot to say: A community forum to express your opinion about what's going on!
LOT'S ADDED VALUE
- LOT helps landowners to manage urban land portfolios
- LOT promotes community-led maintenance of micro-green-sites that can increase biodiversity in the local area and provide the possibility of growing food.
Prototyping
BRINGING LOT TO LIFE
Methods:
- User testing
- Interest surveys
- Benchmarking
- A/B testing
- Business modelling
- Idea pitching
- Scoping collaboration
- Grant application
In the past 6 months, we have done concept evidencing via:
- online interviews with 15 experts
- an interest survey with 25 early adopters
- run 5 remote digital prototyping sessions for user experience.
We found that most people felt that local public land was underutilised and they would be willing to pay a minimal amount to adopt it, provided easy, safe and legal access to land and tools were available. We also tested their comfort with background checks, proposal plans, digital contracts and their roles as ‘stewards’ vs ‘co-stewards’ of land.
Currently, we are planning to pilot LOT, with real people and on real land! We are working with ARUP, Incredible Edible Lambeth and the Lambeth Council with the aim of having LOT to cover the digital channels for citizens engagement for a project based on 4 estates.
Benefits
THE IDEAL SOLUTION FOR THE GREEN RECOVERY
Methods:
- Literature review
- Case study review
- Expert interviews
LOT makes London greener - Accounting for the impact of Natural Capital is a theme that has been explored extensively by the GLA in the last few years. A greener city not only increases properties value and enhances air quality: it has been widely agreed by experts that interacting with green spaces is beneficial for people's mental and physical health. This provokes indirect savings for social care services such as NHS.
LOT fosters community stewardship of land - Community stewardship means that the community will take care of patches that were neglected or that were looked after by contractors. This brings savings from ground maintanance and less neglected spaces. Also, by establishing early on an one-for-all framework to assign land, we envision to lower the number of conflicts due to different ways to see the use of certain patches.
LOT fosters local food security - COVID-19 and Brexit brought in the national debate food security. Urban food growing can't be the solution to feed the whole England but, certainly, could have a positive contribution. A recent report by the Sheffield University has demonstrated how 15% of citizens could be provided of their five a day if 10% of Sheffield green spaces would be converted in food growing spaces.
