Project Leader: Dr Conor Little | Department of Politics and Public Administration
Contact: conor.little@ul.ie
Project
What we're Doing:
The project will involve studying the impact of local government autonomy on the development of policy to enhance the physical and mental health of urban residents, including nature-based solutions and the development of urban green spaces such as green corridors, linear parks, pocket parks, and shared walkways. The project will be designed in consultation with the supervisors and may include cross-national comparative studies involving Go Green Routes partner cities.
Why are we doing it:
The project is part of Go Green Routes, which is a €10.5m EU-funded project sowing the seeds for increased nature-connectedness across Europe, Latin America and China. Its multidisciplinary consortium of 40 organisations is pairing participatory approaches and citizen science with Big Data analyses and digital innovation to co-create "Urban Well-being Labs" in six “Cultivating Cities”: Burgas (Bulgaria), Lahti (Finland), Limerick (Ireland), Tallinn (Estonia), Umeå (Sweden) and Versailles (France). These pioneering cities are implementing “nature-based solutions”. By maximizing the available public space, people can move around the city more actively, enjoy their free time and interact with others, whilst there is also room for restoring ecologically valuable spaces.
Who we're working with :
Go Green Routes - Department of Politics and Public Administration - Department of Psychology - Department of Economics
How well are we doing:
Project outputs after 12 months will include a report for communication to stakeholders and a proposal for the further development of work beyond the first, funded year.
The Department of Politics and Public Administration represents a broad range of interests and areas within the discipline of political science. With internationally recognised experts in European, Africa, Latin American, Russian and post-Soviet politics, as well as Irish politics and public policy, the department has an international and cosmopolitan orientation. In addition to the diversity of area specialisms on offer, the study of politics in Limerick is also enriched by a variety of disciplinary approaches including: quantitive methods, political theory, international relations, international political economy, comparative politics, public policy analysis and critical theory.
The Kemmy Business School (KBS) is one of Ireland’s leading business schools – recently awarded Best Business School at the InBusiness Editor’s Choice Awards – with a reputation, established over 30 years, for providing a first class business education that prepares graduates for successful and rewarding careers in a variety of business disciplines and professions. The KBS is academic home to almost 3,000 students and over 100 enthusiastic faculty and staff and offers a wide range of business and management education programmes, both on campus and at external locations throughout Ireland. With international programme accreditation, we take pride in the quality of our programmes and the calibre of our graduates.
GoGreenRoutes is a €10.5m EU-funded project sowing the seeds for increased nature-connectedness across Europe, Latin America and China.Its multidisciplinary consortium of 40 organisations is pairing participatory approaches and citizen science with Big Data analyses and digital innovation to co-create "Urban Well-being Labs" in six “Cultivating Cities”: Burgas (Bulgaria), Lahti (Finland), Limerick (Ireland), Tallinn (Estonia), Umeå (Sweden) and Versailles (France).These pioneering cities are implementing “nature-based solutions” such as green corridors, linear parks, pocket parks and shared walkways to enhance the physical and mental health of their urban residents. By maximizing the available public space people can move around the city more actively, enjoy their free time and interact with others, whilst there is also room for restoring ecologically valuable spaces.The project will develop a set of environmental quality indicators and exchange lessons-learnt with a group of Seed Cities (Munich, in Germany, the Region of Murcia, in Spain, and Gzira, in Malta) and a Cross-Pollination Network (Mexico City, in Mexico, Beijing, in China, and Tbilisi, in Georgia), who represent large-scale opportunities for the implementation of nature-based solutions.
