Fostering Belonging in Green Spaces

The Leeds City Council Culture Strategy for Leeds 2017-2030 and Leeds Parks & Green Spaces Strategy 2022-32 place green spaces at the core of a vision for a city that offers social cohesion and wellbeing to its residents. In order to make an innovative contribution to the policy, governance and design of green spaces, this guidance investigates how to overcome some of the barriers that prevent people from feeling as though they belong in greenspaces. We show how “belonging” offers considerable potential for supporting the transformation of existing green spaces and informing the design of emerging green spaces.

This guidance is one of the outcomes of a research project entitled “Integrating Intercultural Cities through Belonging in Green Spaces” which started in November 2022 and concluded in July 2023.