REVIEW published: 11 February 2022 doi: 10.3389/frsc.2022.731975 Frontiers in Sustainable Cities | www.frontiersin.org 1 February 2022 | Volume 4 | Article 731975 Edited by: Danielle Sinnett, University of the West of England, United Kingdom Reviewed by: Jun Yang, Tsinghua University, China Meredith Whitten, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom *Correspondence: Ian Mell ian.mell@manchester.ac.uk Specialty section: This article was submitted to Urban Greening, a section of the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities Received: 28 June 2021 Accepted: 06 January 2022 Published: 11 February 2022 Citation: Mell I (2022) Examining the Role of Green Infrastructure as an Advocate for Regeneration. Front. Sustain. Cities 4:731975. doi: 10.3389/frsc.2022.731975 Examining the Role of Green Infrastructure as an Advocate for Regeneration Ian Mell* Department of Planning and Environmental Management, School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom The alignment of Green Infrastructure (GI) planning principles with urban regeneration mandates can have a significant impact on the long-term socio-economic and ecological functionality of an area. As a mechanism to address landscape dereliction GI has been promoted as offering a suite of options to revitalize denuded spaces. This can take many forms including tree planting, waterfront redevelopment, the regeneration of former industrial sites, and a rethinking of spaces to make them more ecologically diverse. However, the successes seen in GI-led regeneration need to be considered in terms of the geographical, political, and socio-economic context. The following provides a review of regeneration projects that have integrated GI into development principles, examining whether these have led to positive change. Through a reflection on the scale, focus and location of these projects we discuss the factors that have shaped investment before identifying key factors that influence the inclusion of GI in regeneration works. The paper concludes that we have a growing catalogue of projects that can be used as a “green print” to align GI with regeneration to successfully delivery landscape rehabilitation and socio-economic revitalization. Keywords: equity, urban development, greenspace, finance, gentrification INTRODUCTION As cities continue to expand and contract, a corresponding impact can be seen in the physical composition of urban landscapes. This can, and should, be considered as both a positive and negative. Formerly underused or undervalued land can be reimagined as multi-functional components of an urban landscape delivering water management, climate change mitigation and socio-economic benefits. However, in many parts of the UK, western Europe and North America, urban, and specifically industrial and infrastructural expansion, has scarred the landscape leaving significant remnants of long-term damage. The industrial heartlands of the Ruhr (Germany), Michigan (USA), and Tyneside (England) all illustrate the ongoing impacts of historical growth at a time when little consideration of landscape conservation was integrated into development. To address this issue, we identify a change in attitude toward the promotion of landscape aesthetics, functionality and quality located within the evolution of “green infrastructure” (GI) thinking in contemporary planning. Within this this paper GI is defined as the: