Search results

The Green Credit Tool is evaluated as a method to quantify the value of green‐spaces and to determine how these green‐space‐values can be replaced or compensated for within urban spatial planning projects.

Amersfoort Local Municipality created the Green Credit Tool to ensure protection and enhancement of the urban green totality. The tool is described and evaluated based on three core elements: the value matrix, the collection of values and green compensation. Findings were based on case studies in Parkweelde and Randerbroek (Amersfoort, The Netherlands).

Green‐planning is not just about flora and fauna, but also about planning for economic benefits and thus needs to have a quantifiable value. The Green Credit Tool enhances integrated green‐planning by means of the value matrix (identifying values of green), collecting values (participation and stakeholder‐identification) and compensation (protecting green spaces).

Assessment of green values will differ between users, experts and between locations.

The Green Credit Tool introduces a different perspective to green‐spaces that can add value to urban environments and thus creates economic spin‐offs. It stresses the need for environmental issues to play a greater role in future planning processes.

Green‐planning is known to have various psychological benefits. The Green Credit Tool is a communication tool and thus incorporates public opinions, enhances social responsibility and enhances awareness of the broader benefits of green spaces.

The Green Credit Tool creates an integrated approach towards the planning of green‐spaces, enhancing the value of green areas and thus ensuring qualitative urban planning and sustainable economic development.

Public spaces within our cities are being redefined through a wide range of nature-based solutions (NBS) including green spaces. In this chapter, we will focus on public green spaces in the wider sense. If well planned and managed, green spaces can promote social inclusiveness by enhancing the livebility of neighborhoods and promoting the development of social interactions. The creation of new green space does not automatically lead to socially just and inclusive development; co-benefits should be available and accessible to the entire community. Prejudices, marginalization, and discrimination on socioeconomic condition, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, or disability still prevent the equitable distribution of these benefits and need to be fully understood before any planning process is undertaken. The governance of public green spaces is still viewed primarily as a matter for the state or as a purely private activity. It is important, therefore, to identify ways to ensure the integrated and transdisciplinary participation of diverse actors, as is shown in some examples from different countries. The planning and design of green interventions should start with the evaluation of existing or potential trade-offs between environmental and social development. Urban green spaces must be designed as places for multiple and diverse social groups. If all these issues are duly considered and addressed, NBS can serve as climate mitigation and adaptation tools that produce co-benefits for societal well-being, thereby serving as strong investment options for sustainable urban development and making our cities green, healthier, and happier places to live.

The purpose of this paper is to review the topic “urban green space” focusing on its social benefits and measure techniques in terms of monetary value and accessibility. It suggests potential research direction by using an integrated valuation and measurement framework, and concludes that urban green space valuation in the providers’ perspective as well as accessibility analysis in the consumers’ perspective are useful tools that provide significant measure techniques in urban green space planning.

The paper uses a systematic approach to build up a conceptual framework that quantifies social benefits of green space from provider and consumer perspectives. The literature review indicates some limitations of existing techniques of valuation and accessibility analyses, which entails an integrated model of measurements.

The paper explores social benefits of urban green space, which includes recreational opportunities, aesthetic enjoyments, adjusting psychological well‐being and physical health, enhancing social ties, and providing educational opportunities. To analyze existing evaluation and measure techniques of urban green space, the paper points out that a single measurement only evaluates certain aspects of urban green space, which may not always be suitable to comprehensively assess social benefits from both providers’ and consumers’ perspectives. Considering this limitation, the paper offers an integrated model to measure urban green space that may deal with current limitations.

The originality of the study resides in designing an integrated model including valuation and measure techniques. It certainly offers an important avenue to evaluate social benefits of urban green space.

The purpose of this paper is to link economic value to urban green spaces to enhance the value of green urban spaces, along with the added benefit it can offer to the urban environment.

As part of the VALUE project (Valuing Attractive Landscapes in the Urban Economy, made possible by INTERREG IVB North West Europe, European Regional Development Fund, European Territorial Cooperation, 2007‐2013), this development approach was designed to enhance the planning of qualitative urban spaces by linking an economic value to green urban spaces, to enhance value and meaning.

Based on case studies conducted in The Netherlands, the approach proves that by linking an economic value to green urban spaces, space is considered differently, authorities tend to prioritize these spaces and additional spinoffs realize.

The notion of green‐value is subjective and differs between users, experts and between locations.

The paper provides local authorities with a new approach to spatial planning, considering the economic value of green urban spaces.

The paper transforms the way in which green urban spaces are valued and planned; by realizing the intrinsic value of green urban spaces, in terms of social, environmental and economic benefit.

The Value Added Planning approach stresses the need for qualitative planning processes that will enhance future economic value and sustainable development initiatives. The green environment is hard to quantify in terms of economic value, but it is this intrinsic value that can provide future benefit and sustainability in terms of place management and development.

Conservation of green space is crucial to the sustainable urban development of China. Nanjing is a central city in the Yangtze River Delta cluster in eastern China. Owing to urbanization, the green spaces in this city have been affected significantly in terms of their scale and structure. Assessing such changes can provide a basis for environmental protection measures and sustainable development. Using Landsat remote-sensing image data from 1998 and 2007, we constructed a distribution map of the patches of green spaces in Nanjing, and analyzed and assessed the changes in scale and spatial layout of the green spaces using various landscape metrics including CA, PLAND, PD, MPS, LPI, NP, PD, TE, ED, MPI, and LSI. Coinciding with a sharp increase in urban population, the area of green spaces in Nanjing decreased by 27.06% between 1998 and 2007. The patches of green space increased by 39%, and the average area per patch decreased by about 47.52%. Green space patches were found to be unevenly distributed among the districts of Nanjing. In urban areas, significant numbers of such patches were found primarily in various types of parks, while in suburban areas, they were concentrated mainly in the hilly forestlands. Green spaces exhibited tendencies towards fragmentation, miniaturization, and discretization.

Urban green spaces are valuable to residents for a variety of reasons and some degree of management is needed to ensure at least their preservation, if not enhancement, in a rapidly urbanising society. Intensification of the urban environment brings pressure upon the undeveloped spaces within a city and an understanding of the needs of residents is needed if green spaces are to be managed in alignment with their wishes, so that changes will be accepted. However, gaining such an understanding of the complex relationships between people and their environment is difficult. Constructs may exist that researcher, respondent, or both have not yet articulated. This paper sets out to address this issue.

The repertory grid method is described as an approach that addresses this problem by researcher and respondent collectively, creating a survey instrument, which the respondent then completes.

The repertory grid technique was applied in Zurich and revealed a surprisingly dominant anthropocentric attitude towards urban green spaces.

The universal anthropocentric perspective allows the interpretation that residents see Zurich essentially as a place for people and furthermore see green spaces as places for themselves to pursue their own interests.

Application of this technique, in the context of an exploratory study, simultaneously provides direction for further research and demonstrates its utility as a tool for planners and managers of urban green spaces.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate residents’ perceptions, preferences and satisfaction concerning the urban green infrastructure of Kalamaria, Greece, to evaluate the importance of urban parks for residents’ well-being and to suggest management improvements.

Following a random sampling method, 385 residents were interviewed. Green infrastructure number and size, design suitability, safety, variety and care of plants, noise pollution, facilities for people with disabilities and duration and frequency of visits to green areas were among the considered parameters. Factor and hierarchical log-linear analyses were conducted.

The existing green spaces were insufficient in number, size and design, and their distribution was unsatisfactory. The facilities and equipment in the green spaces were evaluated as rather mediocre, and most respondents were unsatisfied with the overall planning and management of the green infrastructure in the municipality of Kalamaria. The results indicate that resident’s well-being relates to their satisfaction with urban green infrastructure. Frequent and longer visits of green spaces significantly improved the perceived well-being. The residents expressed an intention to pay 20-40 percent more than the average price for a house with a view of a green area.

Public perception surveys enable green infrastructure managers to identify preferred management alternatives and to use this information in an urban planning framework. Local authorities can use the results of the present survey to manage the city’s green infrastructure, enhance the city’s resilience and anticipate climate change challenges and the future needs of residents.

How are our cities confronting the challenges posed by a warming climate, the loss of biodiversity, and the increasing urban heat island effect? ― This chapter discusses the opportunities and benefits of applying the concepts of renaturalization and rewilding of cities. It introduces nature-based solutions (NBS) in urban planning that are integrated with the aim to enhance urban resilience and to slow down the biodiversity decline, which can be applied in two areas: through the conception of new green neighborhoods and through the regeneration and regreening of existing but neglected parts of the city, such as postindustrial brownfields or economically weak districts.

Contact to nature is essential for human existence, urban well-being, and a good quality of life. Green spaces in cities – big or small – all contribute to health and well-being. However, many cities do not offer residents easy access to green space within the city. Improving better access and extending gardens and parks will deliver a large number of benefits, such as ecosystem services, better water management for enhanced urban flood control, and slowing down the biodiversity loss, with the potential to restore damaged ecosystems. Furthermore, additional green space and NBS help to keep cities cool during heat waves and improve the urban microclimate.

In this context, NBS and regreening can generate significant benefits for citizens, improve urban health and well-being, and offer an opportunity to effectively deploy nature to resolve major societal challenges ― such as social inclusion, food security, and disaster risk reduction. However, it is essential that the design of NBS is fully integrated with other complementary planning interventions and seeks synergies across all sectors.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the measures implemented under the spatial planning law of the Republic of Lithuania, along with various initiatives, to identify whether Lithuania is following the international trend of greening cities.

The authors’ analysis is based on an evaluation of the urban theory-based approach towards greening cities and adopting urban agriculture in Lithuania and legal regulations introduced by the Lithuanian government. The paper specifically analyses the legal requirements enshrined in Lithuanian law that are intended to encourage green infrastructure and urban agriculture in cities as part of the adoption of the principles of sustainable development. The paper focuses on Vilnius, the capital city of Lithuania, to gauge the extent to which the new regulations encourage urban greening and agriculture.

The authors’ reveals that Vilnius is lacking initiatives with regard to urban agriculture, while existing areas for urban agriculture are disappearing. This is happening despite the promising spatial planning reform in Lithuania, which introduced the principle of sustainable development into spatial planning regulations. This is a cause for concern and should lead to renewed calls for a coherent and ambitious approach to the greening of Vilnius and other cities in Lithuania. Furthermore, the lack of action shows that the vague wording used by the regulations does not actively encourage urban agriculture and even results in ignorance of its virtues. Therefore, more precise regulations on encouraging urban agriculture and greening of the cities should be introduced.

This paper is the first to analyse the extent to which the newly adopted principle of sustainable development in spatial planning could affect the greening of Lithuanian cities and encourage urban agriculture. The paper identifies the sequence of opening the meaning of the sustainable development principle in regular legal norms which encouraging the greening and indicates the lack of imperative norms to ensure the due implementation of sustainable development principle.

Green space is one of the main measures to alleviate urban heat islands (UHI). The transformation mechanism of daytime and nighttime scale sensitivity of vegetation coverage to reduce the UHI effect in a daily cycle has been unclear. As a result, we propose a scale sensitivity measurement algorithm to study the spatial and temporal response relationship between UHI and green coverage. Based on the scale theory of landscape ecology and the method of geostatistical analysis, we adopted ArcGIS, MATLAB, SPSS, and other data processing software as well as a large amount of measured and high-resolution satellite imagery data of Beijing and Tianjin to quantitatively study their spatial scale sensitivity and daily variation features of urban green spaces to reduce summer UHI. The results show that first, the green coverage rate and the UHI intensity experience positive and negative correlations during the daytime, and negative correlations at night. When the correlation coefficient is significant, there is a linear relationship between the UHI intensity and the core green rate. Second, the reduction of the UHI by green spaces displays spatial and temporal change scale sensitivity characteristics. The radius scale of daytime sensitivity is 15m, and the radius scale of nighttime sensitivity is 60m. The study's conclusion enriches the theoretical parameters of landscape ecological scales and patterns, and provides spatial and temporal scales for systematic planning of green space to reduce UHI.