GCV Green Network
Connecting Our Quality Spaces

The Glasgow and Clyde Valley Green Network Partnership has, over the last 18 months, developed a GIS based approach to mapping Green Network Opportunities.  

The methodology was developed in response to feedback from planners that the identification of spatial priorities, at both the regional and local authority scale, would be a very useful tool to support the production of Green Network policy and the targeting of action.

The Green Network Opportunities Mapping project brings together a number of spatial data sets which were identified by posing the following questions:

• Where are there opportunities to improve the existing Green Network resource?

• Where are the priority areas to expand the Green Network in terms of access?

• Where are the priority areas to expand the Green Network in terms of biodiversity?

• Where are the major areas of land use change and social need?

A series of datasets were identified or created specifically by the Partnership to provide the answers to these questions.  When overlaid in GIS, spatial correlation between the datasets indicates areas where the greatest opportunities for delivery of multiple Green Network benefit exist.

Fourteen regionally strategic ‘hotspots’ were identified using this approach and are set out in new GCV Strategic Development Plan.  The Partnership has worked with East Renfrewshire, East and West Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire to produce outputs and supporting reports to inform development of their respective Main Issues Reports.  The Partnership is currently working with Glasgow, North and South Lanarkshire and Inverclyde Councils to define their requirements and deliver outputs to meet them.