‘Do you have a special uniform?!’
Helen Simms joined an international workshop bringing together insights from around the world into how natural and cultural heritage policy can be integrated in metropolitan governance to address the climate crisis: London National Park City: Integrating Natural & Cultural Heritage to Build Metropolitan Resilience
Odd as it may seem, I was not surprised by this question when sharing my experiences as a London National Park City Ranger at the Heritopolis London Hub x London National Park City international workshop in June. It is not unusual for people to be intrigued by the concept of a ranger in London and to wonder what we do and wear (I assume visions of Ranger Smith from Yogi Bear or a weather-beaten figure in cagoule and combats repairing footpaths on the moors flood people’s minds!) But actually, a London National Park City Ranger dresses like a Londoner! We come in all shapes, styles, and outfits — and joking aside — this is central to the way the movement works. London National Park City (LNPC) is a grassroots movement for everyone and anyone can join, working in the way that best suits them to make London greener, healthier and wilder. It has arisen from asking What If…? What if we viewed our city differently? What if our city was a National Park? What if we saw ourselves as part of nature and not separate from it?
Heritopolis is an international network of universities, research centres, planning agencies, and independent experts, linked to UN-Habitat. It was launched to bring together academic research and policy work supporting the integration of natural and cultural heritage in metropolitan governance, in order to achieve sustainable urban development. This workshop was co-ordinated by its London Hub, led by UCL Urban Lab (Clare Melhuish), RHUL (David Simon), Historic England (David English) and the GLA, working in collaboration with LNPC. On 13 June 2024, over 40 people representing at least 10 countries participated in the day’s event, which was held at the LNPC visitor centre on Fleet Street.
The first session focused on exploring the concept of London as a National Park City and progress to date. Panellists were Mark Cridge, Executive Director of the National Park City Foundation, Clare Melhuish, Alan Smithies and Jude Hassall from GLA, and Alison Barnes, LNPC Trustee and Chief Executive of New Forest National Park Authority. My key takeaways were that a holistic and multifaceted approach is essential for developing our cities, and dichotomies of nature/culture and urban/rural are restrictive. Whilst LNPC is still a work in progress, it offers the potential to develop a policy framework that brings people together to build resilience and protect the things we value. Critical questions for us to address are, therefore, who are those people and whose heritage is involved?
The second session of the day turned attention to comparative perspectives from other Heritopolis cities, thinking beyond the UK and global north. Pierre-Marie Tricaud introduced the “pilot projects for a nature metropolis” by l’Institut Paris Region in which five Urban Nature Parks are proposed to enhance the landscape, boost biodiversity and increase active travel. The exploratory nature and territorial scale of this vision does offer an appealing way to address the fragmentation of our city spaces and rethink the metropolis.
Also thinking across scales, Els Verbakel of Bezalel Academy discussed a new strategic plan for the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo. Moving beyond the theories of Garden Cities on which the original city was founded, it embodies an expanded notion of ‘regional ecosystem’ to develop this two-cities-in-one. Els reported that research with residents had revealed a citywhere ‘the parts don’t know how to live together’ — a fundamental issue for our times, as the distressing situation in the wider region illustrates. Els spoke of finding alternate ways to do green space in the city (‘implementing new shades of green’) that provide opportunity for connection. I believe there is a kernel of hope here; green and blue sites can help us create spaces for overlap in the city, and ultimately places that hold potential for encounter and acceptance.
Daniel Athias de Almeida’s presentation on participatory management in Carioca Landscapes World Heritage Site, Rio de Janeiro, further illustrated attempts to forefront underrepresented voices in sustainable development. This was clearly a topic the audience was keen to hear more about, urging participants and policymakers to go beyond ‘talking the talk’ and embed the redistribution of resources and power more centrally in their work. Daniel highlighted the potential for intangible heritage and cultural expression as tools for emancipation and resistance, and I would love to see such an approach being pursued more boldly in London’s efforts.
The following talk focused again on underrepresentation within our systems, with Paul Powlesland of Lawyers for Nature posing the question of the rights of nature. He described his own work advocating on behalf of the River Roding to protect its environment from development, provoking vital discussion on how humans might speak for nature, and who it is that does this speaking. Audience members pointed out that historically certain conservation efforts have performed a form of neo-colonialism, to the detriment of indigenous and other populations. There is also the potential for this framing to fix nature as something separate to us. However, Paul noted that the ‘rights of nature’ approach is inspired by the work of indigenous populations, notably in New Zealand and Ecuador, who have understood the interconnection of nature/culture and agitated to find footholds in otherwise hostile systems.
In a bid to interrogate such issues further, the third session of the day focused on everyday experiences on the ground and scope for future development. Alex Albans discussed how the long-term spatial vision of a West Midlands National Park was being mobilised to address the many challenges faced by the region around social sustainability, and Professor David Simon from Royal Holloway used the example of solar farms to explore how national policies intersect with nature and people in local places at peri-urban sites on metropolitan boundaries. Author and campaigner Guy Mannes-Abbott shared how the concept of an urban forest was successfully deployed to protect trees and communities in inner-city Elephant & Castle. Guy’s research asks what an activated, expanded and relational London Urban Forest might be like, given that London is already the World’s largest urban forest (with 8.4 million trees). Combining both blue-sky (green-canopy!) thinking and site-specific, engaged action seems to me to offer a fruitful way to test such concepts, and very much what the London National Park City movement is trying to do.
I spoke about my experiences working as a Ranger in LNPC, including on the Newham Greenway and Thamesmead Pollinator Trails, running wellbeing and nature engagement activities, and creating self-guided nature walks. I explained how LNPC is an ongoing experiment where over 130 volunteers across the city work both independently and in partnership, on hyper-local to city-wide initiatives, to make our metropolis greener, wilder and healthier. As such we are finding out what works and what needs work. A great deal more public communication is required, but inspiring people to re-imagine London as a National Park City does prove to be a powerful tool for bringing people on board and reminding us of the literal common ground of our diverse communities.
LNPC needs to find ways to more effectively mobilise our voice and collective power, and further partnership working will be critical here, just as the other panellists demonstrated from across the globe. For me, a key strength of LNPC is that it operates from the ground up and this means the network is surprisingly diverse for a conservation charity and able to honour a range of narratives and positions. The movement is also international in reach and scope, its Charter was created by 50 countries, and cities across the globe are lining up to join, with the aim of 25 national park cities by 2025.
The final session of the afternoon was a discussion around the ideas, policies, and plans raised across the day. Most attendees in the London Hub workshop agreed that they offer fertile ground to engage with the goal of further just and sustainable development, while also noting that the problem of white middle-class over-representation in such discussions requires further work. I would have loved time to include more in-depth critiques on the initiatives shared and to hear more about how the Heritopolis consortium will feed insights from the workshop into the World Urban Forum 12 in Cairo later this year, which focuses on the theme of ‘Power of Nature’ in the localisation of the SDGs.
There will be no single pathway to progressing the SDGs and site-specific responses will be key, but this workshop gave me hope by demonstrating the plethora of initiatives across the globe that share a common drive; to reimagine and do our cities differently. We should not be afraid to think expansively and experimentally, and embrace our place as nature. One of the panellists reminded us of the words of Brazilian philosopher and environmentalist, Ailton Kernak, a fitting note to end on:
“For a long time, we have been lulled with the story that we are humanity and we have alienated ourselves from this organism of which we are a part, the Earth, starting to think that it is one thing and we are another: the Earth and humanity. I don’t see that there is anything other than nature. Everything is nature. The cosmos is nature. All I can think about is nature.”
― Ailton Krenak, Tomorrow Is Not for Sale
Helen Simms is a London National Park City Ranger. Her work for the movement has included supporting the Newham Greenway Pollinator Trail and designing a nature trail for the LNPC Visitor Centre at 109 Fleet Street. Helen is a curator with a background in geography and the arts. Her PhD explored the role of art in peace-making in post-genocide Rwanda. Last year she ran the Nunnery Gallery at Bow Arts and collaborated with UCL East on the inaugural public programme for the East London Art Prize.
For more information about Heritopolis and the London Hub, see Urban Lab’s event page, or contact Clare Melhuish (UCL Urban Laboratory) or David Simon (RHUL).
