Greenspaces play an important role in supporting quality of life and bring a range of benefits for communities and visitors. They are a key feature within cities, towns and villages and provide opportunities for recreation, play, access and enhance the quality of the environment.
The Glasgow and Clyde Valley Joint Structure Plan provides a strategic framework for future land use within the East Renfrewshire area and aims to promote a Green Network across the conurbation’s settlements and adjoining countryside to enhance the quality of life for local communities and improve it as a place in which to live, work and invest.
The development of a Greenspace Strategy for East Renfrewshire will provide a strategic approach to the planning and management of the greenspace resource, and support the wider policy agenda in East Renfrewshire. Different types and uses of greenspace link into a wide range of policy agendas from health, access, biodiversity, education, community safety, planning and economic development. Well-managed greenspace can provide benefits across all of these policy areas.
Drawing on extensive experience in undertaking open space audits and preparing greenspace strategies, LUC Planning and Digital Design teams carried out an analysis of greenspace provision across the settlements in East Renfrewshire. Aided by GIS, we identified settlements and locations within settlements where greenspace action should be targeted as part of the Greenspace Strategy.
Our GIS analysis of provision combined information on the ‘need’ for greenspace provision, based on information on population density and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), and its ‘supply’, looking at the distance to greenspaces and the area available within the five minute walking distance of 400m, and a fifteen minute walk of 1.2km. The SIMD is based on the small area statistical geography of data zones.
