Agenda item

            The Committee was reminded that various services across the Council, including the Climate Unit and City Regeneration and Development Division, were working together to ensure an integrated approach between urban planning, achieving net zero and aspects of resilience such as supporting play and environmental sustainability through engagement with key stakeholders, including young people, families, and businesses.

            In December 2020, Belfast had launched the Belfast Resilience Strategy alongside the Belfast Net Zero Carbon Roadmap and, with initiatives such as the Belfast One Million Trees programme, these formed key elements of the city’s ambitions to achieve carbon neutrality (80% reduction by 2030 and 100% by 2050). Officers had been working collaboratively to align play, climate neutrality, tree planting and green infrastructure by developing the award-winning Urban Childhood Framework and had tested these new approaches in the design and implementation of the Cathedral Gardens pop-up park and the new Grey to Green programme.

            The Director of City Regeneration and Development advised that, as a result of the Council’s membership in the Resilient Cities Network, it had been invited, at short notice, to participate in a Horizon Europe funding application from the UP2030 (Urban Planning 2030) fund. Horizon Europe was the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion, which looked to tackle climate change, help to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and boost the EU’s competitiveness and growth and was focused on supporting cities achieve net zero.

            She explained that UP2030 aimed to guide cities through the socio-technical transitions required to meet their climate neutrality ambitions. It would do so by enabling a quantum leap from a ´business as usual´ project-by-project decarbonisation approach to a vision-driven, strategy-based approach that was anchored on sound projects and renewed policy development. The approach used urban planning and design as a vehicle to create better connected, more compact, net-zero neighbourhoods that promote liveability and, through designing with intent, promote mitigation actions.

            She confirmed that the Urban Planning 2030 consortium was made up of 46 partners with a total budget of €11,956,686. Belfast had been selected as one of the pilot cities, based primarily on the work via the Resilience Strategy and Bolder Vision, and had been nominated to receive €204,250 to support research, training and policy development related to the creation of a net zero district through: Enhanced tree planting, linking to the Resilience Strategy and Belfast One Million Trees; Green infrastructure, linking to the Bolder Vision and Council’s Grey to Green initiative in the city centre; and Play, linking to the Urban Childhood Framework, and Belfast’s membership of the Real Play Coalition (a global initiative led by the Lego Foundation, IKEA, ARUP, UNICEF and National Geographic).

            She reported that, through the UP2030 funding, the Council would seek to create a framework that would be applied to regeneration projects that integrated tree planting, green infrastructure, play and co-design with young people and supported the integration of play and environmental sustainability into city design. She highlighted that, to maintain alignment with the Bolder Vision interventions, it was proposed that the framework could potentially be tested initially in the Linen Quarter district, which had the aspirations of becoming the first sustainable and net-zero business neighbourhood in Northern Ireland. Lessons learned from this pilot would then be used to identify opportunities in other neighbourhoods and bring forward the concept of net-zero neighbourhoods across the city and the intention was to work across council departments and with city stakeholders to elevate and embed the learning and approaches.

            The Director also advised that a declaration of honour had been undertaken in order to remain within the bid process and officers were working with the consortium’s administrative partner, Fraunhofer, to move the UK applicants from the status of being a Partner to that of an Associate (given that the UK was no longer within the EU). This would mean that funding would be underwritten by the UK government rather than the EU and advice had been sought and confirmed with Legal Services in relation to this designation. She pointed out that it was anticipated that the final Letter of Offer from SEUPB would be signed in December, with a project kick-off meeting of partners likely to take place in early 2023, with a delivery period of three years. It was expected that the Council would team up with another partner, who was linked to the consortium, on the delivery of this project. An initial conversation had been held with one of the Consortium advisor partners, Mapping for Change, around the possibility of cooperating with them in order to bring the project forward.

            During discussion, Members highlighted the potential for a pilot project in a residential area, such as a neighbourhood near a motorway. The Director confirmed that the pilot was not location specific at this stage and could be discussed further.  

After discussion, the Committee:

·        Noted the progress of a Horizon Europe Urban Planning 2030 bid to support development of a framework that integrated environmental sustainability and urban development aligned to the creation of a net zero neighbourhood as a pilot proposal and the offer of funding to further develop the project which was confirmed not to be definitive of any area at this stage; and

·        Approved the participation of the Council as an Associate Member of the Urban Planning 2030 consortium as identified in the report.