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Policymakers and practitioners working in urban greenspace management want to know what kind of interventions are effective in promoting mental wellbeing. In practice, however, they rely on multiple forms of knowledge, often in unwritten form. This paper considers how such knowledge is interpreted and used by a range of stakeholders to identify greenspace interventions to support residents’ health and wellbeing in one UK city. It examines the interface between academic research, policy and practice, drawing on the findings of a three-year study in Sheffield, UK. The Improving Wellbeing through the Urban Nature project investigated the links between ‘urban nature’ and mental health. One strand of the research sought to influence policy and practice, and this article presents findings and reflects on some of the processes of this exercise. It highlights the role of tacit knowledge in practice and its influence on practitioners’ choice of greenspace interventions and the challenges in drawing on such knowledge to influence policy. The findings affirm practice-based knowledge as socially situated, interpretively fashioned and politically weighted. This paper concludes by demonstrating the importance of considering the local context when devising policy prescriptions for greenspace provision and management.

Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Reinterpreting urban institutions for sustainability: how epistemic networks shape knowledge and logics AbstractLong term urban resilience demands a transition to a low-carbon society but poses a dilemma: the institutions that stabilise and perpetuate sociotechnical systems must become agents of radical change. The possibility of alternative futures challenges the logics and values central to institutional identity.ÔSustainability transitionsÕ thus raise questions of institutional reinterpretation. The extent of such reinterpretation hinges on the everyday Ôinstitutional workÕ of actors who bring diverse understandings to bear on their roles and responsibilities. These understandings derive not only from actorsÕ professional roles but also from their engagement in wider epistemic networks.Based on case studies of three urban organisations in northern England, this paper examines the impact and influence of epistemic networks in validating or challenging approaches to sustainability transitions. The research found such networking a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for institutional reinterpretation. Epistemic networks serve five functions: they inspire, legitimise and facilitate potential transitions, and challenge slow progress -but they can also limit transitions. From these findings, it is argued that epistemic networks are central to the identification and development of nascent Ôtransition arenasÕ (Loorbach, 2010) where more sustainable, and ultimately more resilient, futures may be tested and trialled.