scholarly journals Coping With Crisis: Green Space Use in Helsinki Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silviya Korpilo ◽  
Anna Kajosaari ◽  
Tiina Rinne ◽  
Kamyar Hasanzadeh ◽  
Christopher M. Raymond ◽  
...  

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged a deeper exploration about how people deal with crisis. This paper presents one of the first pre- and during-pandemic assessments of urban green infrastructure (UGI) use across the same individuals with the aim of better understanding how people's use of different types of urban green and blue spaces changed during the pandemic. A baseline Public Participation GIS survey (N = 1,583 respondents) conducted in August 2018 was followed up in May 2020 (N = 418 identical respondents) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Helsinki, Finland. We found that residents were more likely to visit UGI closer to their home during the pandemic compared with before the pandemic. Patterns of use of UGI were associated with the quality of residential green areas, for example, people sought out forests nearby one's domicile and tended to avoid parks and recreation areas in order to escape the pressures of lockdown, socially distance and avoid overcrowding. However, spatial cluster analyses also revealed that the places mapped by intensive users of natural recreational areas and more outdoor oriented users became more dispersed during the pandemic, suggesting their active search for new types of UGI, including use of agricultural land and residential areas with high tree density cover. Our results further highlighted that some types of UGI such as more distant natural and semi-natural areas and blue spaces serve as critical infrastructure both before and during the pandemic. Natural and semi-natural areas experienced very little change in use. The presented results have implications for how planners design and manage green spaces to enable residents to cope with crises like pandemics into the future.

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.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria Popa ◽  
Diana Andreea Onose ◽  
Ionut Cosmin Sandric ◽  
Simona Raluca Gradinaru ◽  
Athanasios Alexandru Gavrilidis

<p>Urban green infrastructure has various benefits known as ecosystem services such as regulating, cultural, provisioning and supporting services. Among the provided benefits there are decrease of air temperature, increasing humidity and mitigating urban heat island as regulating services; human-nature relations as cultural services; improving air quality, carbon sequestration as provisioning services and photosynthesis, nutrient and water cycling as supporting services. The high intensity of the urbanization process across the last decades coupled with weak legislative frameworks resulted both in large areas affected by urban sprawl and densification of the existing urban fabric. Both phenomenon generated loss in open spaces, especially green areas. In the context of the sustainable urbanization promoted by HABITAT Agenda, the knowledge related with the distribution, size and quality of urban green areas represents a priority. The study aim is to identify small urban green areas at local level at different time moments for a dynamic evaluation. We focused on small urban green areas since they are scarcely analysed even if their importance for the urban quality of life Is continuously increasing given the urbanization process. We used satellite imagery acquired by Planet Satellite Constellations, with a spatial resolution of 3.7 m and daily coverage, for extracting green areas. The images were processed using Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) techniques implemented in Esri ArcGIS Pro. The spatial analysis we performed generated information about distribution, surfaces, quality (based on NDVI) and dynamic of small urban green areas. The results are connected with the local level development of the urban areas we analysed, but also with the population consumption pattern for leisure services, housing, transport or other public utilities. The analysis can represent a complementary method for extracting green areas at urban level and can support the data collection for calculating urban sustainability indicators.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 5507
Author(s):  
Zhanqiang Zhu ◽  
Wei Lang ◽  
Xiaofang Tao ◽  
Jiali Feng ◽  
Kai Liu

Urban green space (UGS), as a form of green infrastructure, has been given increasing attention in urban planning and its policies. The quality of a UGS is fundamental for the sustainable development of the urban economy, society, environment, and quality of human life, although UGS is unevenly distributed within cities. Aiming to analyze the quality of UGS at the scale of Jiedaos in China, this paper took Haizhu district in Guangzhou as a case study based on collected data from 2010 and aerial imagery from 2012. The Urban Neighborhood Green Index (UNGI) was established by combining four weighted parameters: the green index (P1), the density of buildings (P2), proximity to green areas (P3) and building height (P4). Results from comparing with green index show that (1) the UNGI performed better for UGS planning due to its ability of uncovering impact of the built environment and its accessibility on quality of UGS; (2) the UGS has significant effects on neighbors, which underlies social inequity of UGS supply and presents rich information for urban planning and decision making; (3) a small green field attaching to a community plays a key role in fulfilling the need of neighbors for green space, fitness, and leisure in China, which is usually ignored due to the ownership of private property. It suggests recognizing UGS and improving its quality in old towns as well as improving urban villages characterized by poor quality of green space with green infrastructures. The UNGI can inform city planners regarding their consideration of UGS, and it can contribute to measurements of sustainability and the development of green infrastructure.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-180
Author(s):  
Martina Kičić ◽  
Dijana Vuletić ◽  
Silvija Krajter Ostoić ◽  
Sergej Šimpraga ◽  
Ninoslav Matošević ◽  
...  

Forest Park Grmoščica is an important part of urban green infrastructure for the citizens of the western part of the city of Zagreb. To enhance the quality of management of the forest park to the satisfaction of its daily users, it is important to know their socio-demographic characteristics, visiting behaviour, recreational activities, as well as their perception of the forest park. The survey for users of the Forest Park Grmoščica was developed within the INTERREG DANUBE’s URBforDAN project. It was filled out by visitors of the forest park using on-site face-to-face method and was also available online. The results of the survey provided information about the users of the Forest Park Grmoščica, their socio-demographic data, visiting habits and perception. Also, the typology of users was given depending on the activities they undertake in the forest park (cyclists, joggers, visitors who spend time in Forest Park Grmoščica with their families, and pet walkers) and their main characteristics. The obtained data can improve the management of the Forest Park Grmoščica in such a way that it fulfils its social and ecological function and is adapted to the needs of its users.


Author(s):  
Fitri Nurmasari ◽  
Raup Padillah

Banyuwangi Regency is one of the agricultural centers in East Java province and Indonesia. Mostly,Banyuwangi people work as farmers due to the fertil soil and wide amount of agricultural land in Banyuwangi . Thelarge number of people who work as farmers initiating the formation of farmer groups. One of the farmer groups in theSrono sub-district of Banyuwangi is the "Tan Selo 1" farmers group located in the village of Sukomaju and the "TanSelo 2" farmers group in Sukonatar village. The normal average price of one banana bunch in Banyuwangi is between50-60 thousand depending on the type and quality of bananas. Problems arise when the quantity of bananas in the marketarose, the price of 1 bunch of bananas decreases dramatically. The price of 1 bunch which is usually set at 50-60thousand drops drastically to only 20-30 thousand. This is certainly a problem for farmers in the Tan Selo group. The lackof knowledge of Tan Selo farmers about alternative variants of processed banana based products and the lack ofknowledge of the marketing strategies make it hard for the Tan Selo farmers to increase the economic value of bananaswhich have been used as an alternative income for farmers. Therefore, the solutions offered to overcome the problems offarmers include: equipping and improving farmers' knowledge about the variety of processed banana-based foods andtheir marketing strategies, conducting training to make variations on banana-based foods, conducting training oneffective marketing strategies. Overall, a series of community service programs were carried out perfectly as it expected.The percentage of participants' understanding in choosing high quality bananas is 85%, the percentage of participants’ability in processing banana-based foods is 86%, and percentage of participants who successfully sell processed foodproducts by utilizing online shopping sites is 70%


Author(s):  
Shalini S ◽  
Ravichandran V ◽  
Saraswathi R ◽  
BK Mohanty ◽  
Dhanaraj S K

 Aspire of the Drug Utilization Studies (DUS) is to appraise factors related to the prescribing, dispensing, administering and taking of medication, and it’s associated. Since the middle of twentieth century, interest in DUS has been escalating, first for market-only purposes, then for appraising the quality of medical prescription and comparing patterns of use of specific drugs. The scope of DUS is to evaluate the current state and future trends of drug usage, to estimate roughly disease pervasiveness, drug expenditures, aptness of prescriptions and adherence to evidence-based recommendations. The increasing magnitude of DUS as a valuable investigation resource in pharmacoepidemiology has been bridging it with other health allied areas, such as public health, rational use of drug, evidence based drug use, pharmacovigilance, pharmacoeconomics, eco-pharmacovigilance and pharmacogenetics.


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