Highly Commended 2010

Full submission available to download here...

THE SEED CATALOGUE

The Seed Catalogue is a way of systematising and implementing an ecological intensification of struggling post-industrial cities. It relies on the power of the 'grown' to bring measurable environmental and economic benefits to its users, and consists of a series of economically and/or environmentally productive 'tiles', with rules for applying each of them to different kinds of urban open spaces. Choice of tiles would vary with different cities, but the strategy is transferable to any city with a combination of unused open spaces and low land values.

The tiles can proliferate as ventures succeed, joining separate open spaces into one regenerative 'bio-economic' system. Instead of wild nature taking over brownfield sites, husbanded nature does: orchards, reed beds, hedgerows. Instead of the city's wastes being exported, and energy imported, they are handled in situ by 'artificial ecosystems'. We propose another approach to regenerating declining UK cities, which accepts the reality of populations too small for a city's physical size, a shrinking tax base and rock bottom land values, and which sees these as opportunities rather than as signs of decay.

We propose that cities unable to make the transition to a post-industrial economy as well as some of their competitors could place themselves in the forefront of a different kind of urban regeneration grown, not built - which could create small businesses, and increase employment and tax revenue. We propose The Seed Catalogue. This is literally about seeds (planting organic market gardens, wildflowers for beekeeping, trees) and about seed money (small capital investments to grow businesses in blighted communities).