Greening/improving estates environment

Council housing estates are often fairly large areas with dense housing and large communal spaces offering a lot of potential to provide pleasant, green, friendly places for the communities living there to use and enjoy. However they can end up barren of greenery and seating, and dominated by car parking, leaving the space feeling unloved and unfriendly, and providing a poor environment for residents. Estates that look un-cared for are treated badly with fly tipping, littering, crime and antisocial vehicle use.

With some strategic greening, estates can easily be transformed into places that offer more than just car storage and concrete and a place to pass through and turn away from - they can forge a sense of community, with outdoor rest areas, play space for kids without gardens, social areas, seating, shade, and a pleasant, positive environment for people to take ownership and be proud of.

Some strategic greening with trees and hardy, low-maintenance shrubs, using both existing grass and bare soil areas along with a variety of planters, can not only define, protect and expand pedestrian space, but offer sanctuary for people and wildlife, reducing overheating in the summer, and cutting down rapid runoff from hard surfaces into drains after rain storms. Green roofs on garages and pram sheds can also be really effective at improving both the visual and environmental amenity of estates, for wildlife, water management and heat dissipation in summer - though is obviously costlier. Hammersmith's Flora Gardens estate has done this really well, with a grant from Natural England.

The global pandemic has shown us the value of our green space, of the outdoors and our immediate environment, for our health and wellbeing. Plants can mitigate air pollution, boost our health, improve our local environment by discouraging littering, and create a beautiful and healing place to live.

I propose improving the entrances and pedestrian routes on mine (Brooking Road) and other estates using these measures, introducing trees and plants wherever possible to line and mark out pedestrian routes and existing green space. The Triangle Estate in Clerkenwell has squeezed a lot of green space in and around the estate, for reference.

The carving out and improving of green space within estates would go a long way to improving Newham's environment for everyone, whether they live on the estates or not.