The Northern Ireland Executive’s Housing Supply Strategy targets at least 100,000 new homes by 2039, a third of them social. This is more than a numbers challenge. It’s a once-in-a-generation chance to create places that work for people, place and nature.
This conference will explore how a landscape-led approach can help deliver Northern Ireland’s housing ambitions, creating homes and neighbourhoods that support healthier communities, build climate resilience and help nature recovery.
Held in partnership with Queen’s University Belfast, this is a practical, grounded event. Expect real case studies, current policy insight and the chance to see landscape-led housing in action.
The day will be split into two sections, with sessions held in Queen’s University Belfast, followed by a site tour.
The Landscape-led Approach
A Landscape-led approach places the landscape at the heart of decision-making from the outset of built environment projects. It encompasses:
- Placemaking: Ensuring developments strengthen community connections and improve quality of life.
- Resilience: Enhancing the resilience of places in the face of climate and nature emergencies.
- Sustainability: Underpinning the delivery of liveable places that unify policy, planning, design, and management.
By embedding landscape activity early in developments, the approach maximises economic, environmental, health, and well-being benefits for people, place, and nature.
This conference is designed for landscape professionals, planners, housing associations, developers, ecologists, policymakers and anyone working to deliver high-quality homes and places across Northern Ireland.
Reasons to attend
By attending this conference, attendees will be able to:
- Navigate Policy & Compliance: Gain essential insights into planning policy, legislation and best practice for housing and regeneration.
- Master Sustainable Design: Understand the value of early landscape involvement, and embed a landscape-led approach to achieve better planning and design outcomes.
- Secure Long-Term Value: Discuss how using landscape professionals can secure long-term investment for developers and local authorities.
- Networking and Future Collaborations: Connect with decision-makers and engage with professionals across the built and natural environment.
- Enhance your skills and knowledge: This event is aligned with the LI’s CPD, specifically strengthening framework competencies in planning, water management, healthy places, and place management.
- Enjoy an afternoon site tour of Lowry Court and see the case study discussed first hand.
Morning programme
Nature in the City: The Pedagogy of promoting Belfast as a National Park City
Dr Neil Galway
Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning
Queen’s University Belfast
Biography
Neil is a chartered town planner and the Director of Postgraduate Studies in Planning in the School of the Natural and Built Environment, which involves coordinating the MSc Planning and Development and MSc City Planning and Design programmes. His current research interests include: planning for inclusive places; critical heritage studies; and planning policy and practice.
Áine McBeth
PhD Candidate
Queen’s University Belfast
Biography
Áine is undertaking a PhD on how Nature-Based Solutions can support more sustainable and resilient urban neighbourhoods. Her research focuses on collaborative governance and community participation in planning and policy. Previously, she worked on LDP policy in council, managed public engagement on infrastructure projects, and founded Native Coffee, a community café.
This talk will focus on the campaign to make Belfast a National Park City in conjunction with Wild Belfast. It will contextualise this campaign by citing the relevant existing and emerging policy context and relevant programmes happening across Belfast.
Through this session, you will gain a greater awareness of academic engagement in promoting green infrastructure in cities, learn about National Park Cities, and be able to consider the interface between planning and urban design pedagogy and landscape architecture practice.
Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) policy in Northern Ireland
Stuart Wightman
Interim Director of Sustainable Drainage
Department for Infrastructure
Biography
Stuart is Interim Director of Sustainable Drainage within the Department for Infrastructure Directorate and has over 30 years’ experience of working in various roles relating to infrastructure across the Northern Ireland Civil Service. This includes policy work in the areas of transport, energy and water and drainage.
Water is one of the biggest constraints on housing delivery in Northern Ireland, and SuDS is one of the most important tools for unlocking it. Stuart brings over 30 years’ experience across infrastructure in the Northern Ireland Civil Service, including policy work on transport, energy, water and drainage.
Stuart will give an overview of the Department’s ongoing policy work on SuDS in new housing developments and its Urban Drainage Transformation Project, at a critical moment for drainage policy in NI. You’ll get an update on the current SuDS policy position in Northern Ireland, an introduction to the SuDS Management Train approach, and an understanding of how SuDS can be retrofitted into urban environments.
Creating beautiful residential grounds for people and nature
Cameron Watt
Chief Executive
Alpha Housing
Biography
Cameron has been Chief Executive of Alpha Housing since 2017. Prior to this, he led the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA). Cameron champions good design in housing, including the ‘HAPPI’ principles for high-quality housing for later life. He initiated Alpha’s pioneering work to support the recovery of nature.
Cameron will tell the story of Lowry Court, Alpha’s sheltered housing development in south Belfast, where an ongoing transformation of the grounds is creating a place tenants love and where nature can thrive. Working in partnership with residents, landscapers, grounds maintenance contractors and ecologists, the project shows what’s possible when landscape is treated as central to good housing, not an afterthought.
You’ll learn how to design residential gardens that support a wide range of wildlife, how to bring sceptical residents with you when changing grounds maintenance, and how to promote landscape investment to attract funding and support.
Afternoon programme
Site visit: Lowry Court
In the afternoon, delegates will visit Lowry Court to see the morning’s case study first-hand. Walk the transformed grounds of this older persons’ housing scheme, including its new pond, the centrepiece of a biodiversity project showing how landscape can deliver for residents and wildlife alike.
