Despite years of teaching about Bath’s architectural heritage, Professor Cristina García Fontán, an architect and lecturer in urban planning at the University of Corunna, Spain, and co-ordinator of the People–Environment Research Group, visited the city for the first time in June and July 2025.
While Professor García Fontán described her experience of walking through Queen Square, The Circus, and The Royal Crescent – emblematic 18th-century developments by architect John Wood – as “essential to fully understanding their cultural significance”, her visit also embodied the University of Bath’s strategic commitment to Global Excellence.
It demonstrated how international academic exchange can play a vital role in advancing sustainability research and fostering global collaboration.
A city grappling with climate change
One of the most profound aspects of Professor García Fontán’s visit was her direct engagement with Bath’s unique position as both a World Heritage Site and a city facing the realities of climate change.
A pivotal meeting at the Guildhall with Bath and North East Somerset Council representatives Mark Minkley and Councillors Sarah Warren and Jess David addressed the complex challenges facing heritage cities.
Also attended by Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist and core member of the Bath Institute for Sustainability and Climate Change (ISCC), the meeting occurred during an unusually hot day exceeding 30°C, providing tangible context for the urgency of climate-sensitive interventions.
While Bath's World Heritage designation provides strong identity and recognition, it also limits interventions needed to address housing and climate challenges.
The irony that swimming is not currently allowed in the River Avon, despite Bath’s historic association with bathing, served as a poignant symbol of the disconnection between heritage identity and ecological reality.
Bridging behaviour and environment
This meeting also marked the beginning of Professor García Fontán’s academic engagements. Her conversation with Professor Whitmarsh explored potential collaborations at the intersection of behavioural change strategies and cultural landscape studies, establishing a shared research agenda that would integrate environmental psychology with climate resilience.
She later presented the Green Gap project and the New European Bauhaus framework to the Environmental Psychology Group at Bath, sparking interest in land stewardship and green infrastructure governance.
Follow-up discussions with Dr Christina Demski, Associate Director of the ISCC, and PhD researcher Amelia Rice further highlighted the need to bridge spatial and social dimensions in climate adaptation, particularly in socially deprived neighbourhoods and housing contexts.
From Bath to Galicia
Professor García Fontán’s visit to Prior Park Landscape Garden offered practical insights into heritage landscape restoration. The National Trust’s recent restoration project (2019–2022), which recovered lakes, cascades, bridges, and pathways while maintaining cultural and ecological integrity, provided her with transferable strategies for similar sites in her home region of Galicia, Spain, particularly the abandoned heritage garden of Pazo de Lourizán.
As a researcher based at the University of A Coruña, located in Galicia, Professor García Fontán has a strong academic interest in the historic city of Santiago de Compostela, the region’s capital and a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Her meeting with Professor Marion Harney, Chair of the Bath World Heritage Advisory Group and Professor of Building and Landscape Conservation at the University of Bath, deepened these insights.
Professor Harney’s leadership in the Bathscape initiative and her work on the 2025–2031 World Heritage Site Management Plan demonstrated how heritage protection can be integrated with climate adaptation.
Their discussion of Bath’s landscape protection, which includes safeguarding the seven hills surrounding the city, highlighted how carefully managed development can preserve the city’s historic character.
In contrast, Santiago de Compostela faces challenges from hilltop construction that disrupts the visual harmony and cultural coherence of its historic urban landscape, an issue central to Professor García Fontán’s comparative research.
From comparative insight to local action
This comparative perspective also informed Professor García Fontán’s involvement in an urban innovation process in the Sydney Place area, where a pilot low-emission zone and street redesign linked to Sydney Gardens was underway. Sydney Gardens is a historically significant site, featuring landscaped gardens, shrubberies, and walking paths.
Building on the University of Bath’s previous advisory role, Professor García Fontán contributed proposals and participated in the public engagement process led by Bath City Council.
Her involvement strengthened connections with residents, local authorities, and researchers, consolidating an interdisciplinary approach and laying the foundations for continued collaboration in the future development of the project.
Global collaboration for a changing climate
Professor García Fontán’s month at Bath demonstrated the transformative potential of interdisciplinary research visits. Her work connected environmental psychology with urban climate modelling, humanitarian architecture with heritage conservation, and local policymaking with international research networks.
The Bathscape initiative shows how academic research can drive meaningful community engagement and landscape restoration. With thousands of participants and volunteers, and the revitalisation of woodlands and meadows, it demonstrates the scale of positive change possible when conservation is informed by research.
Professor García Fontán’s involvement in the Sydney Place and Sydney Gardens initiative further demonstrates the value of integrating research, policy-making, and participatory governance in advancing climate-resilient strategies for historic urban environments.
The experience underscores the significance of historic green spaces and their urban settings as critical infrastructures for climate adaptation and social cohesion. It also reaffirms the University of Bath’s commitment to Global Excellence, championing interdisciplinary and comparative approaches across European heritage cities to address the complex challenges of the 21st century.