Furniture Design Ideas

What has been discovered about the social value of nature to the people of the East Midlands of England?

The questionnaire data was collected at 16 different sites around the east Midlands. The selection was made from a candidate list provided by mem­bers of the East Midlands Regional Biodiversity Action Forum and se­lected to represent a geographical spread and a spectrum from the “wild” to the “urban”. These included sites in the Peak District […]

The main purpose of the focus group research was to gain a qualitative in­sight into the ways in which people value nature in the study area, and to inform the questionnaire survey designed to cover a wider geographical area. The location of each group and potential target populations (namely the general public but, in particular, […]

Scoping meeting A number of themes emerged from the meeting. Many people shared simi­lar concerns and opinions regarding the subject of the study. Most ex­pressed the view that there is not a single definition of nature, as it depends on a person’s educational, ethnic and cultural background. However, they all agreed that the definition of […]

The approach used in this research can be described as “user-led” and was based on Personal Construct Theory (Kelly 1955) and the use of Facet Theory (Canter 1977; Shye 1978; Shye et al.1994; Borg and Shye 1995) in the development of the questionnaire. This approach typically starts by ex­ploring issues with members of the public, […]

Simon Bell OPENspace Research Centre, Edinburgh College of Art Introduction Organisations involved with nature protection or the conservation of bio­diversity are generally interested in wildlife and in meeting the require­ments of legislation on biodiversity. Recently, organisations such as Eng­lish Nature, the government agency responsible for biodiversity protection in England, have been given responsibility to obtain […]

The demands placed on urban nature – as was made clear by the question­ing – are different from those placed on nature outside of the city. Urban nature is its own form of nature, which cannot compete with “nature out­side”. It makes its own demands and is placed in an urban context. Its spe­cial character […]

A special and contentious form of urban nature is represented by so-called spontaneous or ruderal vegetation, as can be found in abandoned areas, for example. There have been urban abandoned areas and spontaneous vegeta­tion, in principle, ever since there have been cities, briefly as an interval between two uses. They have existed more extensively and […]

The participants in the group discussions were asked to evaluate various forms of urban nature in terms of how worthy they were of protection and to prioritise them (see Fig. 2). The participants answered that there should be nature in the city and it should also be protected (from development,commercial use). The large integrated parks […]

This was the central question of the group discussions, which ran through the discussions like a leitmotif. The following ideas have been compressed from the wide range of responses and represent perceptions of urban na­ture: 1. Everything green in the city … the Auwald (in general “lowland forest”, but more specifically the “Leipzig Auwald”), parks, […]