Authors: Kalyn Potter, Project Manager GoGreenRoutes, Department of Psychology and ALL Institute, and Maria Fernadez de Osso Fuentes, PhD Researcher All Institute and Department of Business
Research Stream: Symposium
In January 2021, the Horizon 2020 funded project, GoGreenRoutes, moved to Maynooth University under the coordination of Dr. Tadhg MacIntyre. As a large-scale multinational project at the nexus of human health, climate and equity, GoGreenRoutes is particularly aligned with ALL’s mission. We aim to address complex issues of how the environment impacts human health and sustainability, especially for disadvantaged groups and minority populations who typically have less access to urban green space.
Our evidence-based approach has highlighted that across Europe more than 60% of urban dwellers in Europe do not have access to the minimum requirements for green space access (e.g. half a football pitch within 5 mins. walk of their residence). Thus urban green space, a protective factor for health and well-being, is unfortunately not equally accessible for citizens and within cities where further inequities exist.
A shared agenda between the project and the ALL institute was the emphasis on gender, inclusion and diversity and of course, environmental justice. We have a dedicated Gender, Inclusion and Diversity (GID) panel that has been developing a checklist to support more inclusive representation and engagement by cities and researchers when assessing research impact in green spaces. Alongside this, a forthcoming publication highlights a framework for consideration of GID in supporting nature-based solutions, exploring the concepts of environmental justice, green gentrification, and considerations for migrants.
Inclusive methodologies are central to GoGreenRoutes in data collection within cities, including walking interviews, person centred monitoring, co-creation and participatory strategies. They are designed to empower citizens to take ownership of their greenspaces and reap greater benefits from them, for the health of their community and the health of the planet.
Our highly interdisciplinary project also benefits greatly from the interdisciplinary nature within ALL, creating opportunities for further collaboration and relationship development across fields of law, policy, inclusive technology, and health, while also affording GoGreenRoutes early career researchers extraordinary opportunities to engage across disciplines. The collaborative engagement within ALL has further enhanced our early career researcher’s ideas and aided in developing broader skill sets in inclusive research methodology along the way.
Our ALL-based early career researchers, Maria Fernandez de Osso Fuentes and Cassandra Murphy have been supported in considering more inclusive perspectives within their research on digital placemaking and nature connectedness, respectively.
Specifically for Maria’s digital placemaking research, being part of ALL has provided her with a constant reminder of the importance and value of inclusivity in any type of work, but more necessarily for research involving communities. Digital placemaking aims to help people connect with places and create attachments through digital media . Now, GoGreenRoutes is exploring how to apply digital placemaking to urban nature spaces to support people’s wellbeing through a modified Delphi Study. Through her literature review she discovered four key characteristics of digital placemaking, one of them being inclusion. However, this has been briefly described and has been generally overlooked. Furthermore, being part of the ALL Institute and connecting with other researchers who also focused on the development of technology to empower communities and enhance their wellbeing, has helped Maria be focused and motivated during her PhD journey.
Similarly, Cassandra started her journey exploring the concept of nature connectedness, which is a sense of feeling one with the natural world around you. Through this, she slowly began to see the limitations of this construct and its associated measures. For example, one such item used to measure nature connectedness states ‘My ideal vacation spot would be a remote wilderness area.’ For many the idea of a vacation is foreign and unattainable, with individuals knowing no area different from that they grew up in. In designing her methods, Cassandra wanted to be as inclusive as possible, which meant expanding her remit of participation. She used a modified Delphi method which, in its typical form, looks at recruiting academic or medical experts to gain opinions and consensus on an area with limited existing knowledge. However, she looked to interview both experts and ‘expanded experts’ on their own experiences with nature. A similar method of data collection is used by Maria in her work. Through this, Cassandra found a need to make our language around this concept more inclusive. This led her to take a step back and look at this whole concept as a relationship that could lead to a connection rather than simply one. She is now working on using her data to develop a measure which will help individuals and practitioners better understand how we connect with the natural world and how there is not a one-size-fits-all model. She is working with researchers across different areas of expertise to make it as inclusive as possible taking multiple needs and perspectives into account to try and bridge the gap of nature access for general society.
Through Cassandra’s work on nature connectedness, a key theme that emerged as a barrier to access or benefitting from was gendered considerations for safety. This has led to a partnership in research with GoGreenRoutes Project Manager, Kalyn Potter, whose research interests focus on gender and perceptions of safety. Furthermore, Summer 2023 SPUR intern, Eamon Callan, will be piloting inclusive methods for measuring campus safety in greenspace and investigating gender differences, in line with this research on the Maynooth University Campus.
GoGreenRoutes, backed by ALL, has thus supposed the project to move beyond state-of-the-art, allowing our team to reach real world issues and to advance our outputs by encompassing more inclusive perspectives. The work supported by our engagement with the ALL Institute will continue to inform future research avenues by GoGreen ventures, shaping our understanding of equity and access to nature in urban spaces, and allowing us to cultivate spaces that foster more empowered futures for everyone.
Links below to blog posts for this years symposium.
Around ALL in Seven Blog Posts…
Celebrating the Third Anniversary of the ‘Ideas in ALL Blog’ in the 2023 Winter Symposium; a Commentary from the Editorial Team
Building a Digitally Wealthy society with the support of the ALL Institute
Moving Forward to Have a More Inclusive Society
Reflecting on a Journey of Meaningful Impact: Celebrating with the ALL-Institute
Developing the Campus as a Healthy Environment: The MU Healthy Campus Steering Group