Abstract
Over the past forty years brownfield land has been increasingly brought back into use as greenspace to deliver benefits to the environment, society and the economy. Whilst various practices and techniques to establish vegetation on such challenging sites have been developed, erratic delivery and inadequate aftercare and management have jeopardised the degree to which benefits can be realised. With a focus on community woodland, this research is concerned with the process by which brownfield is regenerated to greenspace, about which there is a scant understanding and comprehensive practitioner guidance is lacking. This research developed an improved methodology to aid project planning and delivery via a process model (Planning Regeneration Support Model: PRiSM). Although guidance and advice are available on parts of the regeneration process, this work set out to integrate best practice by taking a collaborative approach. Using action research which employed qualitative research methods, the researcher worked with practitioners at ‘live’ case study sites. The resulting process of regeneration was modelled and revised through four iterative cycles. The resulting applied model was tested and shown successfully to meet practitioner needs. The case studies demonstrated that project planning was improved through the use of the model. Particularly, project plans were more detailed and constructed earlier to enable the practitioner to forecast tasks and test possible delivery scenarios. The methodology developed for PRiSM has been adopted as a Forestry Commission (FC) Practice Note and therefore will be used in FC brownfield to greenspace projects.