Abstracts

 

An innovative partnership response to the management of urban river corridors - Sheffield's River Stewardship Company

 

T.C. Wild, S. Ogden and D.N. Lerner

11th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 2008.

 

This paper presents initial experiences with the establishment, functioning and impacts of Sheffield's River Stewardship Company (RSC), in the light of recent major flooding incidents and the city's ongoing programme of regeneration. The RSC has been established as a partnership venture between several key local stakeholders, including public authorities, private enterprises and not-for-profit groups. Its aims are to: provide river clean-ups undertake riverside patrols; respond to fly-tipping, vandalism and graffiti; advise on wildlife habitats; and carry out basic maintenance work. Many riverside sites in large cities are now prime targets for redevelopment, presenting a range of significant land-use management issues. This trend can be viewed as a ‘once in a lifetime' opportunity to build high-quality, high-density communities. However, society's ability to rise to this challenge depends on how organisations negotiate and manage the right balance of different activities, access and land uses. We examine cases where the delicate mix of users' aspirations appears to have been successfully achieved, and describe how the RSC is working to coordinate investment in the infrastructure of urban river corridors and their long-term management (‘place-keeping'). We also examine opportunities to roll-out similar schemes, by sharing experience of transferable lessons and exploring practicable management frameworks.

 

Assessing sustainability for urban regeneration in a river corridor - accounting for climate change

 

R.M. Ashley, P. Moug, T. Wild, A. L Hurley and S. Molyneux-Hodgson

 

Pp. 1-10. Conference proceedings paper. International conference on Low Impact Development, Seattle, 2008.

 

There are many approaches and tools available for ‘sustainability assessment’. These share a common foundation in that they take a number of base pillars, invariably including: social, economic and environmental considerations or some variant thereof. The difficulties lie in how these can be combined to make a sustainability assessment (i.e. integrating non-commensurate factors). The current consensus for this is that the information collected in the form of attributes, indicators and criteria, should be used to support discourse amongst the stakeholders in deciding on interventions that are more sustainable. A project is described that is looking at portfolios of interventions in a river corridor with the objective of improving liveability in Sheffield and how the sustainability assessment framework for this has been set up and is being applied.

‘Measuring’ sustainable living agendas
 

A.L. Hurley, P. Moug, S. Molyneux-Hodgeson, R. Ashley and N. Schiessel

 

SUE-MoT Conference - Second International Conference on Whole Life Urban Sustainability and its Assessment, Loughborough, UK 2009.

 

This paper describes the process of developing a novel sustainability assessment methodology for a new urban redevelopment research project. Understanding of the process is drawn from decades of research in the development of sustainability assessment frameworks and in particular those concerning water management and urban development. Parallel research themes in the areas of organisational change, complexity and uncertainty are drawn upon in order to address acknowledged limitations of assessment frameworks for practical decision making. Different interpretations of the notion of sustainability and its assessment amongst researchers at the beginning of a multi-disciplinary urban regeneration project provide a view of the starting point of - and potential barriers to, a transition from disciplinary-focused to integrated and inclusive decision making.

The aims of the work were to:
• devise a framework for understanding and applying commonly agreed sustainability principles to a multi-disciplinary urban redevelopment research project by involving stakeholders and researchers in its construction,
• formulate a means of review and revision of the framework to reflect learning and increased integration throughout the project
• apply the framework to other types of assessment within the project, and
• log the process of framework development in order to better understand how learning and integration came about (or didn’t)

The urban redevelopment research project examines interventions into an urban river corridor that aim to produce significant social, economic and environmental gains and hence more sustainable living agendas. The research is divided into ‘themes’: ‘people’ (stakeholder engagement and governance processes), ‘river’ (ecological goods and services), ‘design’ (possibilities for intervention and innovation) and ‘values’ (agents of change and measures of success). The work described here was undertaken as part of the values theme. It examines indicators of success utilised within the different themes and provides a structured view of the uncertainty these may generate in terms of holistic sustainability assessment. Implications for planning and management decisions for the perceived sustainable living agendas are considered.

There is an increasing requirement on professionals to demonstrate their efforts towards more sustainable development and to justify and audit their decision making in terms of the environment and society as well as in economic terms. Therefore, frameworks will either evolve or another way of assessing sustainability must emerge. The challenge is how to ‘measure’ the dynamic process of change to a new way of working - what causes change for the better? Can the causes be understood and transferred to future projects? Within the URSULA project the aim is to at least begin to understand how to use sustainability assessment to assist the transition to a more integrated way of working.

  

Making places profitable – the role of urban green space

 
T. Wild

 

12th European Forum on Urban Forestry in Arnhem, The Netherlands (May 27-30, 2009)

 

How can high-quality greenspaces and other public spaces contribute to regeneration? In an era when providing sustainable jobs and growth dominate political agendas across Europe, the question of how open spaces and landscape improvements impact on economic competitiveness has become a hot topic indeed. Enhancing ‘liveability’ is a major priority for our towns and cities, which, presented with a complex set of opportunities and threats are expected to develop robust yet pragmatic strategies, providing a high quality of urban life whilst responding effectively to global climate change. Amidst this complexity and uncertainty, practitioners and policy makers must also involve a wide range of stakeholders in the planning process, building capacity amongst communities and institutions. Those responsible for planning and managing greenspaces face such challenges daily, but may also possess important knowledge and key tools that can help address them.

Set against this charged and evolving backdrop, this presentation examines the potential role of green space in creating both attractive and functional urban places, questioning potential effects on city competitiveness. The talk will focus on relationships between landscape quality and investment decisions. It will look at the importance of a providing a high-quality, well maintained public realm as part of integrated regeneration strategies and ‘masterplans’, including a range of partners from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. Case studies will be examined of public realm improvements in Sheffield city centre. The talk will pose provocative questions such as how and where can investments in green infrastructure be targeted, how can we ‘value’ greenspace enhancements, and how can we provide for the durable, long-term management of open spaces. It will draw on evidence from European initiatives such as the Interreg IIIB project Creating a Setting for Investment, and research on urban river corridors undertaken through a new project entitled ‘URSULA’.

 
A Bayesian Belief Network to model the effect of weir modification on a recreation ecosystem service 

 

E.A. Shaw, V. Kumar, D.N. Lerner and E. Lange

 

 Modelling Ecosystem Services, Lecce, Italy, May 2009

 

The River Don in South Yorkshire, England, is typical of a post industrial river. Following its ecological death due to a century and half of severe pollution, the river ecosystem is now in a state of recovery. However its morphology still remains modified far from its natural state, in particular being heavily impounded by weirs. Various economic, environmental and social aspirations for the river reflect the different ecosystem services it currently and potentially can provide and are driving interest in the modification of the river’s weirs.

As part of ongoing work to produce a decision support tool based around the ecosystem service framework that aims to establish how potential weir modifications affect the provision of the river’s ecosystem services, a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was produced that predicts the effect weir modifications have on the recreational quality of the river for canoeing.

This presentation describes the process of constructing the BBN; how the structure of the causal net was identified and relationships between variables determined. Attention is given to how spatial issues were dealt with, including the interaction between local and catchment scale river recreation quality, and the mismatch between the different canoe group conceptions of the optimum configuration of weirs. Lastly the overall usefulness of the BBN approach for modelling ecosystem services will be discussed.

 

Governance of urban river corridor ecosystem services

A.R. Holt

9th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, London, 10-12 June 2009. Submission to Workshop 8: Water

 

The need for integrated water management is becoming more widely accepted. Simultaneously, there is a recognition that social and ecological systems are linked, and an increasing move towards adopting an ecosystem approach. Urban river corridors provide many important ecosystem services that are valued by people. Consequently, informed decisions about complex trade-offs necessitates an integration of knowledge that is difficult to achieve within single organisations or agencies. It therefore requires networks of individuals and organisations that span a number of scales (local-regional-national), institution types and multiple levels of organisation.

 
Using a social network perspective and Sheffield as a case study, I explore how individuals and organisations arrange themselves to make the complex decisions required to manage ecosystem services provided by urban river corridors. I have identified a large network of 122 individuals that are involved in urban river corridor regeneration, involving 41 diverse organisations. These preliminary results show that the vision of sustainability for the urban river corridors is driven largely by the city council, and individuals within a sub-network of organisations called the Sheffield Waterways Strategy Group. This paper also discusses how, using this network as a basis, I aim to identify individuals that act as regeneration ‘champions’, and reveal their characteristics. I will study the structure of the social network between organisations, analysing the social processes that drive it, with a view to evaluating the overall governance of Sheffield’s urban river corridors.

 
 

Qualifications, Practical Constraints and Dilemmas: The Story of a Stakeholder Workshop

P. Moug, L. Sharp, S. Connelly and S. Molyneux-Hodgson

Nordic Environmental Social Sciences 9-12 June 2009

Working Group 6: Community Engagement for Sustainability

 

Deliberative and participatory rhetoric prevails in conceptualisations and practices of community and stakeholder engagement whether in relation to the development and implementation of policy or in academic research. However, there are many factors standing in the way of stakeholder engagement that matches such rhetoric. This paper sets out to consider the impact of ‘qualifications’ (personal attributes and resources), practical constraints and organisational dilemmas in the story of a participatory stakeholder workshop organised as part of URSULA (Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas), an interdisciplinary strategic research project investigating the integrated and sustainable redevelopment of urban river corridors in the city of Sheffield, England. How do the qualifications of stakeholders and researchers, the pre-existing context in the which the workshop occurs, and the decisions made by the organisers of the event influence the shape, process, and outcomes of the workshop as well as how the process and outcomes are valued and utilised? It is found that in all stages in the story of the workshop, the context in which the workshop exists, decisions made in the organisation of the event, and the qualifications of researchers and participants play a part in influencing the participative qualities of the workshop and the project.

  

  

Studying a river corridor: exploring positionality in the production of knowledge on sustainability

 

S. Molyneux-Hodgson, N. Schiessel, S. Connelly, G. Haughton, A. Holt, P. Moug and L. Sharp

 

Paper for Presentation at the 9th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, London, 10-12 June 2009. Submission to Workshop 8: Water

 

UK academia has witnessed a huge increase in the support of interdisciplinary programmes and projects on sustainability over recent years. One such programme (Sustainable Urban Environments) currently supports one such project (Urban River corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas). The URSULA project brings together over a dozen disciplines across social science, science and engineering domains. As well as doing research on a river in a city the project does research on itself, thereby introducing an overt reflexive element to the pursuit of academic environmental knowledge.

 This reflexivity results in a recognition of the multiple ways in which the studying of a river corridor can be conceptualised. Just as knowledge about the environment is multiple, so the URSULA project can be understood as not a single entity, but rather as an assemblage of people, practices, perspectives and politics. Given this, we want to question the ways in which this research project represents the environment (specifically an urban river) and explore the positions available for participation in the project. What aspects of plurality are in evidence? And how can they be best mobilised in the generation of knowledge? In this paper, we will explore these questions through the analysis of a specific river site earmarked for regeneration. We find that such sites operate as boundary objects that both facilitate and hinder certain positions and particular knowledge outcomes.

 
Rapid prototyping of urban river corridors using 3D interactive, real-time graphics

  

 E. Morgan, L. Gill, E. Lange and D. Romano

 

 

10th Conference on IT in Landscape Architecture, Malta 21-23 May 2009
  

Power and expertise in the collaborative hegemony of river policy

 

G. Haughton

 

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference, Manchester, 26-28 Aug 2009

In the current context of collaborative hegemony, where partnership and stakeholder involvement are seen as paramount in the making and enactment of environmental policy, there is a clear necessity for a theoretical understanding of the operation of power within these processes. Power is closely entwined with commonly held values and accepted knowledge and expertise in these processes and, I would suggest, dominant in the policy outcomes, despite a rhetoric of shared decision making. As a result, the needs of those less powerful stakeholders tend to be neglected by these processes, and this has tangible outcomes in the way that places are made, changed and maintained.

This paper will begin to explore these issues through an exploration of work on this subject in the field of river policy. Urban river basins are an interesting setting for this discussion for three reasons: Firstly because of the breadth and diversity of expertise involved (environmental, ecology, engineering, planning, local, architectural, etc); secondly because of the interactions of scales of decision making (from local scale interventions to policy decisions at catchment, river basin, or even European level); and thirdly because of growing pressures (at policy level and from a practical perspective) to work in more integrated ways across these divides of specialism and scale.

 

 

Governing and studying a river corridor: power at the policy-research interface

 

S. Connelly*, L. Sharp, N. Schliessel, P. Moug, A. Holt, G. Haughton, S. Molyneux-Hodgson   

 

International Conference in Interpretive Policy Analysis, 25-27 June 2009, University of Kassel, Germany

The governance of water involves a complex set of discourses, including those of ecological and cultural value, of urban design, and of technical, engineering problems and solutions.  Historically within British cities these have been largely ‘expert’ discourses, and to a considerable extent have operated in separate arenas.  However, governance is currently dominated by a meta-discourse of collaborative policy making through partnerships and other modes of “stakeholder involvement”.  This brings the discourses together in deliberative policy making processes, in which they should (in principle) not only engage on an equal basis but also be joined by discourses articulating the values and interests of communities of urban residents and users of water. 

In practice such processes are characterised by contest, exclusion and the emergence of hegemonic discourses.   As an interdisciplinary research project involving academic researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders from the Don river catchment in northern England, the Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas (URSULA) project is in itself such a discursive arena.  Through reflection on the project this paper explores how different forms of power operate at the interface between academic and policy worlds to structure the creation of legitimate and governance-informing knowledge from the interactions of diverse discourses.

 

Managing the sustainable regeneration of urban river corridors

 

T.C.Wild and D.N.Lerner

 

CIWEM Annual Conference 2009: Water and the Global Environment, London, April 2009

This presentation reports on new work to assess the sustainability of integrated ‘interventions’ in urban river corridors as part of URSULA - a major new project researching urban river corridors and sustainable living agendas. The talk will also discuss how apparent conflicts between catchment management approaches and spatial planning regimes might be resolved. Sheffield has an ambitious programme of planned regeneration centred around its rivers, informed by international experiences derived through transnational cooperation programmes. The city’s five fast-flowing watercourses were historically of central importance to its communities. Following a sustained period of neglect and environmental degradation, riversides are now a firm target for redevelopment. However, following the severe flooding events of June 2007, new collaborative planning approaches are needed that are capable of exploiting the unique economic, social and environmental opportunities presented by riverside regeneration, whilst improving ways of handling the inherent risks. URSULA has developed a place-based model to help generate more sustainable approaches to urban river corridors redevelopment driven by dialogue between stakeholders (public, private, not-for-profit and communities) as to their aspirations. This discourse is facilitated using dynamic 3d graphical visualisations, underpinned by in-depth research into the interactions between social, economic and environmental costs and benefits of interventions such as access improvements, river restoration, integrated urban water management and using the river for power and cooling. This provides opportunities to understand how physical measures and non-physical actions might best be combined to maximise ‘win-win-wins’, or how trade-offs between different stakeholders’ aspirations might be managed to achieve optimum responses. 

 

 

River daylighting  -  a review of current practices

 

J. Bernet, E. Westling,  Z. Barta  and T. Wild

 

 CIWEM Annual Conference 2009: Water and the Global Environment, London, April 2009

Many rivers in the UK are buried below ground with the result that the local population may be unaware of the existence of a river or stream running beneath streets, buildings or open spaces. Such culverted reaches have low ecological integrity and they reduce the recreational value of an area. Therefore opening up buried water courses and restoring them to more natural conditions (river daylighting or deculverting) is encouraged by organisations such as CIWEM, the Environment Agency and SEPA. Daylighting is a river restoration technique claiming to deliver multiple benefits, including social and economic benefits alongside improvements to environmental quality. However, as with many other river restoration projects the reporting of outcomes against stated objectives is rare and inconsistent (Bernhardt et. al 2005, Science Vol. 308, 636 - 637).

We review published references on daylighting projects both in the UK and internationally. The aim of the review was to assess the objectives of the projects and if they were seeking to address both environmental and socio-economic components of the water environment. We also established the existing evidence for the purported social, economic and environmental benefits of daylighting. The outcomes highlight the need for collaboration to collate information on such projects across the UK (work which has now commenced at the University of Sheffield) and to support the development of evidence-based policy. We also report results from preliminary surveys on social awareness of urban rivers, economic impacts of wider river restoration projects and the ecological effects of culverts on the stream biota. 

 

Can collaborative visualisation help deliver more sustainable urban river corridors?

 

Wild, T.C., Morgan, E., Gill, L., Lange, E. and Lerner, D.N.

River Restoration Centre Conference, York, April 2010

We report on work to explore scenarios for river restoration in a dense urban setting, undertaken through the URSULA research project in collaboration with the Sheffield Waterways Strategy Group (SWSG).  Convened by the local strategic partnership Sheffield First, SWSG has the aim of promoting more sustainable forms of regeneration along the city’s urban river corridors. In this respect it is an important and interesting group, since it brings together spatial planners with those responsible for river basin management planning, as well as other interests including biodiversity, community cohesion and economic growth.

During the last year, URSULA researchers held a series of participative workshops with SWSG to consider current flood defence and public realm enhancement proposals, located at the Wicker-Riverside area of central Sheffield. The work with this group has included generating and discussing new river restoration ideas at this key city centre location, involving deculverting, weir modification and habitat enhancement.  

One of the most fascinating and exciting aspects of our research has been the development and use of interactive, 3-D visualisations of urban river corridors, built using computer-gaming technology. This research represents a major innovation in its own right. However, perhaps as important is to consider how such techniques can be employed strategically, in the setting of a collaborative planning process, alongside other tools such as GIS and models of flood-risk. These findings offer insights into how practitioners of urban river restoration might adopt such partnership approaches, using an iterative process of envisioning, developing and testing urban designs. We contend that with careful planning, an open mind and sufficient resources, these techniques may help deliver more sustainable approaches to regeneration. 

The talk will present new findings highlighting some of the challenges and opportunities presented when attempting to develop new responses to old problems using the ‘engage-deliberate-decide’ approach to planning. We show how this iterative process – one of sharing perspectives, sketching out ideas, considering impacts and refining responses in the light of people’s varying aspirations - is a far cry from the usual practice of decide-announce-defend.

 Where weirs were: A look at the benefits of weir removal

 Shaw, E.A., Lerner, D.N. and Lange, E.

 River Restoration Centre Conference, York, April 2010

Weir removal is commonly advocated as a river restoration measure. It is also a proposed River Basin Management Plan (RBMP) action for achieving the Water Framework Directive (WFD) objective of reaching Good Ecological Status for river ecosystems. The assumption that weir removal will result in an improvement in river ecological quality and be of net benefit to stakeholders often appears to be unquestioned. We review how impoundment by weirs and weir removals affect river ecology, and the provision of ecosystem services, using the Don Catchment, South Yorkshire, as a case study. It is found that the benefits of weir removal are not clear cut. Removal increases the provision of some ecosystem services at the expense of others. The same applies to measures of ecological health. However there is a lot of uncertainty as the impacts of weirs on some ecosystem processes aren’t clearly understood. Also it is noted that impacts of removal are highly dependent on a weir’s biotic, physical, economic and social context. Therefore the costs and benefits of weir removal must be considered on an individual weir basis, while maintaining a strategic overview that accounts for the effect of multiple weirs on catchment wide processes, such as fish migration. Further it is concluded that by focusing on weir removal to achieve Good Ecological Quality, the WFD may underplay some ecosystem services provided by rivers. The removal of weirs is a trade-off situation, not necessarily improving the provision of all ecosystem services, natural processes or fish populations. It is clear further research is required before we can be confident in impact assessments of weir impoundment and removal.

 

Interactive 3D landscape assessment models

Gill, L., E. Lange, E. Morgan and Romano, D. 

Digital Landscape Architecture, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, 2010

 
URSULA, Urban River Corridors and Sustainable Living Agendas, is a major interdisciplinary research project examining the complex problem of sustainable development of urban riverside landscapes. One area of research taking place within URSULA is to investigate the role that interactive three dimensional (3D) visualisations of landscapes can play in the sustainable design of such landscapes, especially as a means to facilitate collaboration between diverse groups of stakeholders. Studies by Schroth [1] and Bishop [2] both conclude that interactive visualisation technology is suitable for such a role. However, other studies state that there may be a high production cost for landscape models, the software tools are perceived by non-users as too complex, or by users as too limited. Another factor that compounds these issues is highlighted by Morgan et al. [3] who state that, when visualising multiple scenarios, certain designs can force a major reconstruction of a model, further increasing the time to produce a visualisation.
One method to reduce the time and effort involved in creating 3D models is procedural modelling, where the computer generates models from simple input data and a set of construction rules. This has been shown to be an effective method for automating the process of generating landscape models from GIS data by Hoinkes and Lange [4] and Buchholz et al. [5].
In this paper, a generative 3D landscape modelling system is proposed, which would deliver procedural modelling from attributive, region-based topographical data, but also allow alterations to take place in the resultant 3D models. These edits would be stored in or with the underlying data, thereby allowing automated reconstruction of the edited model at a later stage.
Whilst it is evident that interactive 3D visualisations can deliver a flexible representation of the spatial and aesthetic nature of planned landscape changes, they provide no analysis of other qualities of the design. Nevertheless, data driven models and decision support tools that deliver these assessments do exist and, therefore it is suggested to combine a generative 3D landscape modelling system to multiple data driven assessments. These assessments would produce data to inform, but also constrain the editing of models in 3D to form an “Edit – Analyse – Inform – Constrain” feedback cycle. It is hypothesised that placing the proposed system into landscape planning processes will deliver usability benefits in terms of speeding up the construction of landscape models, ease of use, ease of learning and facilitation of decision making.
The paper reports on work being undertaken to implement a prototype of the proposed system that is integrated into an existing three dimensional modelling software package, Google SketchUp.
The existing prototype will continue to be developed and is being incorporated into an existing landscape modelling software package, Simmetry 3D. This software is based on computer game technology that allows an instant transition from interactive 3D design to eye level “walk-throughs” of proposals to provide an accessible visual assessment for use with stakeholders. It is anticipated that it is in this form that the prototype system will be tested for usability with stakeholders involved with collaborative design workshops organised by the URSULA project.

[1] O. Schroth, “From Information to Participation - Interactive Landscape Visualization as a Tool for Collaborative Planning,” Dissertation No. 17409, ETH Zürich, 2007.
[2] I.D. Bishop, “Visualization for participation: the advantages of realtime,” Trends in Real-Time Landscape Visualisation and Participation Proceedings at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences 2005, E. Buhmann, P. Paar, I. D. Bishop, and E. Lange, eds., Berlin: Wichmann, 2005, pp. 2–15.
[3] E. Morgan, L. Gill, E. Lange, and D. Romano, “Rapid Prototyping of Urban River Corridors Using 3D Interactive, Real-time Graphics,” Proceedings Digital Landscape Architecture 2009, E. Buhmann, J. Kieferle, M. Pietsch, and E. Kretzler, eds., Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Malta: 2009, pp. 198-205.
[4] R. Hoinkes and E. Lange, “3D for free. Toolkit expands visual dimensions in GIS,” GIS World, vol. 8, 1995, pp. 54-56.
[5] H. Buchholz, J. Döllner, L. Ross, and B. Kleinschmit, “Automated Construction of Urban Terrain Models,” Progress in Spatial Data Handling, 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, Springer, Springer, 2006, pp. 547-562.

Institutionalising Deliberative Democracy in Urban Waterways Governance 

Moug, P.
 

61st Annual International Conference of the Political Studies Association, London, 18th - 21st April 2011  
 

This paper draws on, and contributes to, a growing theoretically informed literature on the ‘institutionalisation’ of deliberative democracy in actually-existing settings. The setting under study is the network of stakeholders and institutions associated with the redevelopment of the river corridors in the city of Sheffield UK. Two interlinked challenges facing any movement towards the development of deliberative democracy are explored. First, the theoretical and empirical relationship between institutional features of deliberative democracy rooted in the state and civil society (theorised as ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ ideal types respectively), and actors’ dispositions (relations with, and attitudes to, other actors and deliberative democratic norms). Second, the achievement of a balance between normative faithfulness (that institutions and dispositions should be, to some extent, recognisably deliberative and democratic) and legitimacy (where the ‘rightness’ of processes, outcomes and actors’ dispositions are likely to be recognised as such by stakeholders). The paper proposes an alternative set of general deliberative democratic institutional features and conditions - as opposed to imposing prescriptive institutional frameworks - grounded in actors’ constructions of Sheffield’s river corridor governance networks: a situated approximation of deliberative democracy in the ‘messy’ processes of waterways governance in Sheffield - and beyond.