CDA projects featured at EcoCity World Summit

Central District Alliance will have two spotlights on our public realm projects in this year’s EcoCity World Summit, held at the Barbican Centre from 6th-8th June. Launched in 1990, the EcoCity World Summit is the longest-running global conference on ecology and cities – bringing urban leaders from across the globe together each year to focus on actions that can be taken to rebuild a balance between humans and environmental systems.

The theme for the 2023 Summit is Connecting Communities, exploring how collaboration, participation and the democratisation of design create better cities. The CDA projects being highlighted speak directly to this theme, as both public realm initiatives are the product of partnerships with Islington Council and other local stakeholders.

We have co-designed an emerging pocket park with the business and resident community on Clerkenwell Close through public engagement steered by our project delivery partner YesMake. The project has been facilitated in direct partnership with Islington Council’s Greening the Public Realm Programme Manager Charlotte Glazier, who will be highlighting the journey on June 7 in EcoCity’s Alternative Green Finance Models panel. Under the title “Steps to Connect,” Glazier will reflect on the NEIRF funding that has enabled the project, which seeks to power a Green Finance for Pocket Parks Initiative that could be applied throughout the borough of Islington. Under this framework, our pocket park acts as a proof-of-concept for the potential of public-private partnership to enable strategic street greening.

We have also been working with Islington Council and local residents’ group Friends of St Johns Garden to foster biodiversity enhancements at St Johns Garden, under Camden and Islington’s joint Parks for Health Strategy. This work will be featured in an E-Poster, 'Health and Biodiversity in Small Inner City Green Spaces,' that will be live throughout the Summit. The poster demonstrates how CDA has fostered collaboration between the business community, residential community and a local authority to target investment in planting, landscaping and community programming that maximises the benefits that parks can offer urban areas.

CDA are thrilled to celebrate both projects at the EcoCity Summit this June, as they demonstrate our commitment to work that cultivates a network of green links throughout the BID area while stimulating community connection and attachment to place.