Green Spaces & Flood Mitigation

Join Parks for London in Beckenham Place Park to explore how green and blue infrastructure can be used and adapted to mitigate flooding in urban areas, provide enhanced spaces for nature, and increase access for local communities.

Through real-world case studies at different scales—from street-level sustainable urban drainage (SuDS) features and pocket parks to major landscape interventions—you’ll hear how nature-based solutions are already helping reduce flood risk and enhance water management in cities.

Many urban environments are not equipped to manage flooding, while at the same time municipal authorities are facing greater financial challenges. Working innovatively with our green and blue spaces to find nature-based solutions to manage flooding is critical to both the management of flooding and the quality of the water available in cities.

London has experienced multiple flash floods in recent years, causing major disruptions and over £100m in damages in 2021 alone. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, urban areas, with their hard, impermeable surfaces, are becoming increasingly vulnerable, and green and blue spaces where water can be absorbed are critical to both flood management and the quality of the water available in cities

With the GLA's Surface Water Strategy recently published, this seems an ideal time to share knowledge and experience of using green and blue infrastructure to transition urban green infrastructure to become more resilient and adaptable to future flooding.

The event will:

• highlight the value of urban green and blue spaces in providing nature-based solutions to flood management in the local and wider areas
• disseminate best practice and case studies that demonstrate how green and blue spaces can be best managed to mitigate against flooding
• provide a forum where practitioners, researchers and policy makers meet and develop their networks

** To ensure as many people can benefit as possible registrations are limited to two places per organisation **

Agenda (download he

This work has been supported by the UKRI-funded RECLAIM Network Plus grant (EP/W034034/1)