Transforming brownfields into urban greenspaces: A working process for stakeholder analysis

Journal article, 2023

Urban greenspaces (UGS) provide a range of ecosystem services and are instrumental in ensuring the liveability of cities. Whilst incorporating UGS in increasingly denser cities is a challenge to planners, brownfields form a latent resource with the potential of being converted into UGS. Transformation of brownfields to greenspaces, however, requires engagement of a variety of stakeholders, from providers to users. The overall aim of this study was to support effective and realistic realisations of UGS in the context of urban brownfields’ regeneration and stakeholder engagement. A working process was developed to: 1) integrate methods relevant for UGS realisation for a) identification and categorising of relevant stakeholders, b) mapping their interests and resources, c) identifying various challenges, and d) matching those challenges with the mapped resources over the timeline of UGS development; and 2) apply these methods to assess relevance and shortcomings. The methods were applied to a study site in Sweden, and data was collected using a questionnaire survey. The survey received 31 responses and the respondents’ comments indicated that the combination of several uses, especially integrated with an urban park, is preferable. Visualisation was an important component for data analysis: stakeholder categorisation was effectively visualised using a Venn diagram, and the needed mobilisation of resources among stakeholders to manage identified challenges was visualised using a timeline. The analysis demonstrates the need for collaboration between stakeholders to achieve an effective realisation of UGS and how multiple methods can be used in concert to map stakeholders, preferences, challenges, and resources for a particular site. The application at a study site provided site-specific data but the developed stakeholder categorisation, and the method for matching identified challenges with the stakeholders’ resources using a timeline, can be generalised to applications at other sites.