Green Infrastructure: Why It Matters and Why It’s Hard to Deliver with Professor Ian Mell

Professor Ian Mell discusses how green infrastructure has moved from the margins of planning into mainstream conversation. He explains the political, economic and cultural barriers to delivery in the UK, cautions about uncritical reliance on markets and offsets, and highlights lessons from Asian cities where ambitious, large-scale projects and data-driven delivery have driven visible change. The episode explores equity, climate adaptation, placemaking and how to combine technical valuation with everyday lived experience to make green infrastructure work for communities.

Guest
Ian Mell, Professor of Environmental and Landscape Planning, University of Manchester. Author of The Growing Green Infrastructure in Contemporary Asian Cities.

Host
Wendee Zhang, Postdoctoral researcher at Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery working on projects investigating the health/wellbeing benefits of urban green and blue spaces.

Key takeaways

• Green infrastructure is now part of national conversation but delivery and funding remain inconsistent across the UK.
• Economic valuation helps enter conversations with funders but cannot capture all environmental value. Markets and offsets need careful scrutiny.
• Asian cities provide rapid, large-scale experiments in GI that the UK can learn from, particularly on urban regeneration and converting failing infrastructure into green space.
• Lived experience matters. Simple design elements: shade, seating, lighting, bins, playgrounds; often determine whether green space is used and benefits well-being.
• Political will and long-term funding are essential. Short political cycles and fear of failure limit bold local investment.
• Climate adaptation and social justice must be addressed together to ensure equitable access to benefits.

You can also see Ian's lecture that he gave to the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery here.

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on nature recovery from researchers and practitioners.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within this podcast are those of the speakers alone, they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, or its researchers.

The work of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is made possible thanks to the support of the Leverhulme Trust.

Transcript

00:00:05 Stephen Thomas
Welcome to the Nature Recovery Podcast.

00:00:10 Stephen Thomas
We take a closer look at solutions to biodiversity decline and meet the people behind those ideas.

00:00:23 Wendy Zhang
Welcome to the Livingham Centre for Nature Recovery Podcast. I’m Wendy. I’m a postdoctoral researcher working on nature, health and well-being. Today we have Ian Mell, Professor of Environmental and Landscape Planning at the University of Manchester. We will be talking about green infrastructure in the UK and in Asian cities.

00:00:52 Ian Mell
Thanks, Wendy. It is lovely to be here. Over the last 10 to 20 years, green infrastructure has moved from being a marginal part of planning to a mainstream conversation. Not mainstream like transport, but it is now part of strategic planning discussions. People understand it not just as land use but as a set of principles, elements and benefits. COVID pushed this idea further by highlighting the health and social value of green space. Green infrastructure is now treated as essential infrastructure in some government thinking and is embedded in policy and guidance, including the national planning policy framework.

00:02:16 Ian Mell
Its delivery varies across the UK. Scotland and Wales have done well; England is different. The conversation has broadened from small specialist groups to everyday local and national debates, linked to climate change, biodiversity net gain, the national GI standard and neighbourhood planning.

00:03:12 Wendy Zhang
Some cities say funding is promised but not delivered. Why does that gap exist? Is it about government capacity and the mechanics of planning delivery?

00:03:52 Ian Mell
This is a long-standing problem across the environment sector. We never have enough money and environmental outcomes are often not valued in the same way as economic outputs. Treasury and economists want a number. Putting a single number on the environment is impossible because value is partly intangible and varies between people. Ecologists and ecosystem service analysts can model some functions, like how vegetation manages water, but numbers alone do not tell the whole story.

00:05:44 Ian Mell
The challenge is balancing quantitative models with human stories. If you want to convince a developer or politician you must combine monetary arguments with clear accounts of how people’s lives and communities benefit. Historically we have had siloed expertise and insufficient long-term investment. Many projects receive small, one-off funding instead of large capital programmes. Projects are often bespoke and not targeted at deprived areas. Political cycles and fear of getting it wrong also inhibit local councils from investing in untested interventions. There is genuine effort at delivery in places like Natural England, but capital and revenue funding remain limited.

00:11:15 Ian Mell
There is also a spectrum of environmental opinion. Some focus on radical rewilding. I sit in the middle. Not every place needs or can have wild reintroduction. We need moderation and consensus that some actions are more important than political positioning, but that consensus can evaporate with changing governments.

00:12:00 Wendy Zhang
There is growing interest in nature finance and biodiversity markets. Green infrastructure is the base on which biodiversity sits. What is your view on markets and green finance?

00:13:00 Ian Mell
I am cautious about market talk. Valuation is useful to enter conversations with funders and governments, and economists can model returns that make sense to developers and investors. But markets can also misrepresent or commodify nature. Offsetting projects far away raise fairness concerns. A developer buying credits in another country may not help local communities and can lock recipients into long-term disadvantage. Economic valuation has a role, but it should not replace the intrinsic argument: without nature we do not survive. Trying to put a single price on the Amazon or on major ecosystems is problematic. Economists want numbers; that can be useful but also limiting.

00:18:34 Wendy Zhang
You recently published a book, The Growing Green Infrastructure in Contemporary Asian Cities. Why should UK planners pay attention to Asian cities?

00:19:15 Ian Mell
South, East and Southeast Asia are rich case studies of urbanisation under intense pressure. Cities across Asia face biodiversity, climate, social justice and infrastructure challenges at scale. They have adapted and combined ideas from elsewhere — water sensitive urban design from Australia, sustainable drainage from the UK, and more — and then bespoke those approaches to local conditions. Examples include Tokyo, Bangkok, Seoul and several Chinese cities. They show both success and failure, but they are useful because they illustrate how to integrate landscape, design and policy under intense urban pressure and extreme weather.

00:21:47 Ian Mell
Asian cities also show a global exchange: ideas travel, are modified and travel back. That challenges Western assumptions that we know best. Looking beyond our region makes the GI literature richer and offers design motifs that can be adapted in the UK, such as converting redundant infrastructure into greenways.

00:24:36 Wendy Zhang
What are the future directions from your work in Asia? Where should the UK look next?

00:26:33 Ian Mell
We are seeing growing collaboration between UK and Chinese academics. China has strengths in data and delivery; the UK has conceptual frameworks. Several trends will continue: landscape regeneration; converting failing infrastructure into green space; prestige projects that give visibility to GI; and the national GI standard which sets benchmarks for design and access. The global exchange of ideas helps us think about who uses green space and how. That drives better planning for equitable provision.

00:30:10 Ian Mell
We must remember that people use green infrastructure differently in different cultures. In some places parks are active social spaces at all hours; in others they are empty after dark. Identity, communal patterns, and feelings of inclusion matter. Planners must think about climate adaptation and social justice together, and about access for all communities.

00:33:10 Wendy Zhang
With the biodiversity crisis and the 2030 agenda approaching, what needs to happen to change practice so we make better progress by 2030?

00:34:11 Ian Mell
It comes back to political will. Governments pay lip service to the environment but often favour short-term, pro-development agendas. Other countries have made long-term, high-capital commitments to green infrastructure and benefited politically and economically. The UK flip-flops. We need stronger, consistent political leadership and practical guidance from national policy that helps local government deliver, not just more iterations of “do better.” COVID briefly raised public appreciation for outdoor spaces, but markets and short-term political incentives often pull priorities back.

00:36:47 Ian Mell
Local leadership can help. Examples like London under Sadiq Khan and Manchester under Andy Burnham show how city-level politics can push agendas. The UK needs sustained commitment, clear tools for planners and funders, and a willingness to invest at scale.

00:39:22 Wendy Zhang
How can we better show evidence that green infrastructure improves daily well-being? Is there causality?

00:40:20 Ian Mell
Evidence must combine numbers and lived experience. I ask students to visit sites and feel them. The Beijing Forest Park inside the ring road is an extreme example: silence and scale matter. For policymakers and funders we need ecosystem service models and return on investment analyses. For communities we need simple, relatable examples: shade in summer, a safe park for kids, seating and bins. Often the solutions are common sense and low complexity. If you ask people what they want in a park they name simple things that make a space usable. Good planning combines technical models with real, on-the-ground understanding of how people live.

00:45:50 Ian Mell
Cities where people live in apartments rely heavily on public green space. Designing for everyday use — exercise, social gatherings, intergenerational activities — changes behaviour. Placemaking matters. Younger people often prefer walkable, well-connected urban places without cars. That demand is growing and should shape planning.

00:46:30 Wendy Zhang
We hope future developments in the UK treat green infrastructure as essential infrastructure. Thanks, Ian.

00:46:32 Ian Mell
Thank you, Wendy, and thank you for the invitation.

00:46:39 Stephen Thomas
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