Urban Green Up

The award winning URBAN GreenUP project

The project has helped to create new green corridors across Liverpool that are helping to tackle environmental issues such as air quality, lack of biodiversity and potential flooding. 
 
The project, which took place between June 2017 and May 2023, was awarded nearly £3.5 million of Horizon 202 European funding to retrofit, trial and monitor over 40 Nature-based solutions across the city.  

Partners in the project included Liverpool City Council, The Mersey Forest, the University of Liverpool and organisations in Valladolid (Spain) and Izmir (Turkey).

Over five years the Liverpool partners undertook a range of innovative research projects and work with local communities and organisations such as the Business Improvement Districts to identify and retrofit a number of ‘green corridors’.

Liverpool has many open spaces – both high quality parks and waterside spaces created by the Victorians – but also has a large number of derelict sites left over as a result of depopulation in the twentieth century. These poor environments can have a serious impact on human health, quality of life, wellbeing and security, as well as being detrimental to the city’s image. There’s also great potential to utilise many of these spaces as ‘nature based solutions’ to environmental challenges that are increasing due to climate change.

A number of sites have been transformed thanks to this project, including locations within the Baltic Corridor, the business and commercial district of the city centre and the Jericho Lane and Otterspool areas. Work has included planting trees, introducing green walls (also known as vertical gardens), establishing rain gardens and sustainable urban drainage systems and improving and creating pedestrian and cyclist routes in and out of the city.

The project monitored environmental, social and economic benefits to the area and further details about the outcomes of the project can be found on the Urban GreenUP data portal.  
 
Read more about the URBAN GreenUP project –  http://www.urbangreenup.eu/ 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730426