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Publications
Publications (22)
Recent decades have witnessed a steady increase in efforts from a range of actors to facilitate and support meaningful and effective engagement with coastal communities and stakeholders. Indeed, this move towards improved participatory approaches are increasingly framed as being integral to successful and sustainable management of coastal resources...
The urban environment is at increased risk of unforeseen disturbances associated with climate change and urbanisation. Urban open space, when appropriately located, designed and managed, can potentially support underlying ecosystem services and provide multiple social-ecological benefits. Conversely, poor planning or design can result in mono-funct...
The UNESCO Biosphere Reserves (BRs) comprise core conservation areas supported by a buffer and transition zone of sustainable development. This zoning can help manage urbanisation around conservation areas. Although it is UNESCO policy to measure the number of BRs that have interactions with urban areas, there has been no systematic assessment of u...
The management of UNESCO biospheres (BRs) differs from that of other protected areas because they incorporate gradients of land use. Typically, this progression moves from a 'core' zone of highest legal protection for nature conservation supported by a buffer zone and an outer transition zone where sustainable development is permitted. In the scien...
This research analyses extent of urbanization of all designated UNESCO biospheres within the European Union (EU-28) as of 2016 in order to determine the scale and degree of urban interactions. Using the Copernicus Urban Atlas 2012 (EEA 2016), Biosphere Smart GIS platform and Google Earth, BRs were classified as urban if fully or partially situated...
Transitioning is a unidirectional process of mainstreaming sustainability within normative societal behaviour, which communities hope will build resilience, reduce our dependence on distant resources and lead to the transformation towards more sustainable living as an end product. Throughout Europe there are numerous examples and pilot or demonstra...
Urban resilience can be understood as the application of social-ecological systems thinking to the city in order to build adaptive capacity to change in urban systems. Vacant sites can become the focus of explorations into how to adapt and do things differently, for example in response to a housing crisis or recession. This paper explores the mappi...
The ‘landscape’ approach to planning and design has long since advanced a social-ecological perspective that conceives ecosystems health and human well-being as mutually constitutive. However, conventional public sector organisational arrangements segregate and discretely administer development issues, thereby militating against the holistic viewpo...
The translation of the often conflicting legal and policy goals for urban biodiversity into management actions can be challenging. The aim of our study was to understand how this operationalisation occurs in Ireland and to identify any potential barriers to a more effective implementation of these goals. A survey was distributed at conferences and...
The EU FP7 TURAS project seeks new adaptive and flexible approaches to urban planning and governance that can build social-ecological resilience in response to the convergence of crises. This paper identifies the mapping of underused spaces as an example, exploring the practice through re- examination of a map showing vacant sites in Dublin from 19...
Recent years have witnessed a wave of interest in the concept of green infrastructure (GI) as a means of applying an ecosystem approach to spatial planning practice; however, more limited attention has been paid to decision-making processes or tools to enhance GI within spatial plans and guidance. We address this deficit by reporting on the develop...
Apart from the scientific challenges of monitoring and understanding urban biodiversity, its management presents many practical challenges. In particular, urban biodiversity is essential to the experience of nature for the urban population as well as for delivering ecosystem services such as flood control. The management of urban biodiversity there...
Housing development in rural localities represents one of the most visible and contested indicators of landscape change, as many European rural landscapes that are regulated by weak planning regimes are transformed by incremental suburbanisation. However, scant attention has been given to understanding stakeholder perceptions and interpretations of...
Urban green space (i.e. urban biodiversity and green infrastructure) provides multiple ecosystem
services in areas of high population density. In these areas, resistance and resilience of green
space to e.g. climatic extremes are thus of prime importance for the maintenance of ecosystem
services. However, urban green space design and management is...
This paper addresses the issue of residential design of new development in rural localities. We explore both the use of rural housing design guidelines by planning authorities and also design preferences among the public and stakeholder groups in rural Ireland. Drawing on analysis of design guidelines, survey results and focus groups, we argue that...
Projects
Projects (4)
Thesis Question: How do urban green spaces (UGS) in the buffer zone of the Dublin Bay Biosphere (DBB) support biodiversity conservation in line with the aims of the biosphere designation?
Thesis Aim: To analyse and categorise the landscape structure of UGS of DBB to understand ecosystem processes operating here and assist in future land use management and ecosystem services assessment.
The TURAS project aims to research , develop, demonstrate and disseminate transition strategies and scenarios to enable European cities and their interfaces to build resilience in the face of the most significant sustainability challenges facing them.
