More than green: implementation of multifunctional blue-green infrastructure in residential areas of European cities

2017 ◽  
pp. 553-556
Author(s):  
D. Csizmadia ◽  
K. Szilágyi ◽  
P.I. Balogh ◽  
I. Säumel
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 6930
Author(s):  
Shinsuke Kyoi

This study evaluates people’s preferences regarding the proximity of their residence to agricultural urban green infrastructure (UGI), such as agricultural land and satoyama, and discusses the availability of these types of land as UGI. UGI is vital for reducing the negative environmental impacts of urban areas, as these impacts are too large to ignore. In this study, we conducted an online survey and a choice experiment to investigate people’s perceptions regarding the proximity of their residence to agricultural UGI (AUGI). The respondents of the choice experiment were 802 inhabitants of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, which has rich agricultural resources. To examine explicitly the spatial autocorrelation of people’s preferences, in this study, we used the spatial econometrics method. The main empirical findings are that people prefer agricultural land far away from their residence—more than 1000 m, not within 1000 m—which reflects the not-in-my-backyard phenomenon. Meanwhile, people’s preferences regarding proximity to satoyama are complicated and their preferences are positively spatially autocorrelated. The results indicate that policymakers and urban planners should manage and provide AUGI far away from residential areas; otherwise, they must address people’s avoidance of neighboring AUGI.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ewa Burszta-Adamiak ◽  
Wiesław Fiałkiewicz

Nowadays green roofs play a key role in alleviating the negative effects of urbanization. Despite investors awareness of the advantages of green roofs, there are still some barriers that hinder investments on a large scale. As a result a financial and non-financial incentives are implemented. The review presented in this paper allowed to identify the most popular initiatives and to formulate recommendations for creating incentive supporting implementation of green roofs in urban areas.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (20) ◽  
pp. 11330
Author(s):  
Anna Lower ◽  
Agnieszka Szumilas

Contemporary cities generally lack the balance between the development of the spatial structure and the communication possibilities of the inhabitants. The high motorisation rate in Poland, as well as in other European countries, and the preferred choice of individual means of transportation have both contributed to a significant increase in congestion over the last 10 years. The aim of this research was to try to establish to what extent a consciously conducted parking policy can help control the mobility of inhabitants of selected Polish cities. The starting point for the analysis was the availability of parking spaces in residential areas, introduced as an imposed indicator in the operative planning documents. As part of the research, the authors of this paper analyzed the legal provisions of the operative Local Spatial Development Plans (MPZP) concerning the parking function for housing estates five of the biggest cities in Poland. The results were confronted with data on selected European cities. Nearly 550 planning documents from the years 2000–2019 and parking standards operating in individual countries were cataloged and analyzed. The research results show that for 20 years Polish cities have mainly been using the possibility of determining the minimum rate of parking spaces. Regulations attempting to limit the number of cars are incidental. However, this is a necessary direction of legislative changes.


Author(s):  
Galen Newman ◽  
Tianqi Shi ◽  
Zhen Yao ◽  
Dongying Li ◽  
Garett Sansom ◽  
...  

Communities adjacent to concentrated areas of industrial land use (CAILU) are exposed to elevated levels of pollutants during flood disasters. Many CAILU are also characterized by insufficient infrastructure, poor environmental quality, and socially vulnerable populations. Manchester, TX is a marginalized CAILU neighborhood proximate to several petrochemical industrial sites that is prone to frequent flooding. Pollutants from stormwater runoff discharge from industrial land uses into residential areas have created increased toxicant exposures. Working with local organizations, centers/institutes, stakeholders, and residents, public health researchers sampled air, water, indoor dust, and outdoor soil while researchers from landscape architecture and urban planning applied these findings to develop a community-scaled master plan. The plan utilizes land use and built environment changes to increase flood resiliency and decrease exposure to contaminants. Using a combination of models to assess the performance, costs, and benefits of green infrastructure and pollutant load impacts, the master plan is projected to capture 147,456 cubic feet of runoff, and create $331,400 of annual green benefits by reducing air pollution and energy use, providing pollution treatment, increase carbon dioxide sequestration, and improve groundwater replenishment. Simultaneously, there is a 41% decrease across all analyzed pollutants, reducing exposure to and transferal of toxic materials.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (14) ◽  
pp. 5548
Author(s):  
Konstantina-Dimitra Salata ◽  
Athena Yiannakou

As climate change and other interdependent challenges are expected to become increasingly acute and unpredictable, so the need for policies and measures to reduce risks and uncertainties in order to adapt to these changes becomes more imperative. Cities can influence their adaptation, resilience, and eventually their sustainability through spatial planning with the use of more ecosystem-based planning tools, such as Green Infrastructure (GI). The present paper is an attempt to assess whether and how city strategies address the objective of an adaptation which interconnects the criteria of vulnerability, adaptability, and resilience through spatial planning. For this purpose, the paper examines the Resilience Strategies of seven European cities of the 100 Resilient Cities initiative (100RC). Based on a thematic analysis, the paper investigates whether these strategies incorporate a spatial planning approach which contributes to adaptation to climate change, focusing on GI as a spatial planning tool. The paper argues that there is room for improvement in all the examined strategies, as none of them fully incorporate the concept of GI, and, furthermore, that some critical planning principles which contribute to adaptation are missing.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 779
Author(s):  
Vito Emanuele Cambria ◽  
Thomas Campagnaro ◽  
Giovanni Trentanovi ◽  
Riccardo Testolin ◽  
Fabio Attorre ◽  
...  

Understanding and explaining the use of green spaces and forests is challenging for sustainable urban planning. In recent years there has been increasing demand for novel approaches to investigate urban green infrastructure by capitalizing on large databases from existing citizen science tools. In this study, we analyzed iNaturalist data to perform an assessment of the intentional use of these urban spaces for their value and to understand the main drivers. We retrieved the total number of observations obtained across a set of 672 European cities and focused on reporting from mapped green areas and forests. We used two separate multivariate explanatory models to investigate which factors explained variations in the number of observations for green areas and forests. We found a relatively heterogeneous use of these two urban green spaces. Gross domestic product was important in explaining the number of visits. Availability and accessibility also had positive relationships with the use of green areas and forests in cities, respectively. This study paves the way for better integration of citizen science data in assessing cultural services provided by urban green infrastructure and therefore in supporting the evaluation of spatial planning policies for the sustainable development of urban areas.


Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
Yixin Zhang ◽  
Weihan Zhao ◽  
Xue Chen ◽  
Changhyun Jun ◽  
Jianli Hao ◽  
...  

Stormwater management is a key issue in line with global problems of urbanization and climate change. Assessing the effectiveness in managing stormwater is crucial to maintain urban resilience to flooding risk. A method based on a stormwater management model (SWMM) was developed for assessing the control of stormwater runoff volume and the percentage removal of suspended solids by implementing a Sponge City strategy. An interdisciplinary approach was adopted incorporating Low Impact Development (LID) with urban green infrastructure and grey infrastructure paradigms in a typical old residential community in Suzhou, China. Sponge facilities for reducing stormwater runoff included bio-retention cells, permeable pavements, grassed pitches, and stormwater gardens. The simulation results of SWMM show that the stormwater pipe system can meet the management standard for storms with a five-year recurrence interval. The volume capture ratio of annual runoff was 91%, which is higher than control target of 80%. The suspended solids reduction rate was 56%, which meets the requirement of planning indicators. Thus, the proposed method of spongy facilities can be used for renovation planning in old residential areas in China. Implementing spongy facilities with a LID strategy for stormwater management can significantly enhance urban water resilience and improve ecosystem services.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 801
Author(s):  
Hua Xia ◽  
Shidong Ge ◽  
Xinyu Zhang ◽  
Gunwoo Kim ◽  
Yakai Lei ◽  
...  

Quantifying the dynamics of green infrastructure (GI) in agricultural peri-urban areas is of great significance to the regional ecological security, food security, and the sustainable development of urban integration. Based on remote sensing images, this study aims to provide a spatiotemporal dynamic assessment of the GI in Baisha District from 2007 to 2018 to improve the layout of GI and planning policies from the perspective of ecological security and food security. Research methods include landscape pattern indices, spatial autocorrelations, and grid analyses in this case study. The results suggest that ensuring the dominant position of farmland is critical to maintaining the composition and connectivity of the overall GI. The recreation, inheritance of farming culture, and ecosystem service functions of farmland should be improved to meet the growing needs of urban residents. GI includes the farmland, greenspace, and wetland on both sides of the Jialu River that should be retained and restored as much as possible to protect natural ecological processes. Simultaneously, construction of important urban facilities and residential areas in flooded areas should be banned. A part of the evenly distributed large greenspace patches should be moved to both sides of the Jialu River to increase the agglomeration effect of GI. Optimization measures in this case study also offer a perspective for other agricultural peri-urban areas that have experienced similar urbanization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 13745
Author(s):  
Carolina Rojas Quezada ◽  
Felipe Jorquera

In an urbanized world, the sustainability of cities will depend on their form and urban structure. In this sense, fabrics that are compact, dense, green, and suitable for non-motorized transport methods are more environmentally efficient. For the purpose of contributing new tools to the design, urban planning, and sustainability of nature in residential areas, this study characterizes the urban fabrics of six urban wetlands in the Latin American city of Concepción (Chile), which is known for its blue–green spaces. In a wetland city, we model urban patterns through spatial relationship using a statistical regression model (OLS—ordinary least squares) with the urban variables of density, distance, population, housing, highways, green areas, and building permits. Concepción shows predominantly low- to medium-density fabrics, and it is not integrated with the urban wetlands. In fact, it was observed that the residential areas do not take advantage of the blue–green spaces and that the urban fabrics do not favor proximity, with a transportation network that promotes the use of cars, leading to the wetlands being inaccessible and fragmented. However, as they are still surrounded by open spaces with abundant vegetation, there are highly feasible opportunities for the future development of blue–green infrastructure.


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