scholarly journals Depletion of Urban Green Space and Its Adverse Effect: A Case of Kumasi, the Former Garden City of West- Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Essel

Incorporating greenery has been a vital aspect of city planning. Landscape planning has been a vital aspect of city planning since the 19th Century. Since then, landscape planning has become a social necessity. Assessing the impact of the decline in urban green space is very important. Hence, using Kumasi as a case study largely fit due to the decline of the city’s urban green space. Based on this the study assessed the Landcover change between 2000 to 2010 and projected the Landcover/land use for 2020. It also analyzed the temperature recordings from 2000 to 2016. The result revealed that the city has lost 19.59 km2 and 33.39 km2 of forest and agriculture lands respectively. It was also projected that it will further decline to 0.7 km2 and 8.2 km2 respectively. Among the various Landcover classes, agriculture lands were the most delicate land use which suffers massive decline in acreage. Moreover, the adverse effect of the decline in green spaces has been evident in high temperatures, unattractive environment, and atmospheric pollution. In the last decade (2000-2010), the city’s temperature increased by 0.2oC but has dropped in the past six years (2010-2016). Nevertheless, it doesn’t suggest that the impact of the heat waves has reduced due to the reduction in temperature. Conversely, the impact has increased due to the absence of tree cover. Ultimately, Kumasi’s landscape has depleted and has lost a touch of vegetation, hence appropriate measure needs to be put in place. 

Author(s):  
Yashaswini S* ◽  
Shankar B

Improving the Accessibility of Urban Green Space (UGS) is an integral part of city planning system. People with better access to green space enjoy a wide range of health benefits. Therefore, it is a crucial element to be taken care and nourished in a land use framework. Mysore City is one of the planned large cities in India. The City had a population of about 0.9 million in 2011 and it is estimated to cross the million mark by 2021. There is a growing consciousness on health and wellbeing among the people resulting an increasing demand for urban green spaces both at neighbourhood and city levels. The accessibility helps in promoting usage of UGS and maintaining the balance in environment within the city areas. The main aim of this paper is to study the existing scenario of the UGS within the planning district-12 and to analyse the green space accessibility. The land use of Mysuru city is analysed to understand the city and the micro level land use analysis of Planning district-12 is made. The existing scenario of the UGS within the study area and its accessibility is analysed using different accessibility indicators. Considering the key findings, issues and challenges are identified. Later the suggestions and recommendations for the identified issues is proposed to enhance the green spaces quality and accessibility at neighbourhood levels. The Accessible Natural Green space Standard (ANGst) type of accessibility analysis has been carried to know UGS functionality. Henceforth urban green space network at Planning District levels (local levels) in the City of Mysuru is prepared as a model which can be implemented to the city as whole at the later stages


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 341
Author(s):  
Ralf-Uwe Syrbe ◽  
Ina Neumann ◽  
Karsten Grunewald ◽  
Patrycia Brzoska ◽  
Jiři Louda ◽  
...  

The quality of life in our cities critically depends on the intelligent planning and shaping of urban living space, in particular urban nature. By providing a wide range of ecosystem services (ES), urban nature essentially contributes to the well-being of city dwellers and plays a major role in avoiding common diseases through its positive impact on physical and mental health. Health is one of the most important factors underlying human welfare and is, thus, vital to sustainable development. The ES of urban green space provide other social-cultural functions alongside public health, for example by fostering environmental justice and citizenship participation. Thus, they should always be considered when searching for solutions to urban problems. The aim of this research was to determine the impact of green areas in three selected cities on the health and well-being of people by self-reporting of green areas’ visitors. To this end, we posed the research question: which types and characteristics of urban green space are most appreciated by city dwellers? Based on our findings, we have drawn up recommendations for practices to promote better living conditions. We have also pinpointed obstacles to and opportunities for leisure time activities as well as ways of supporting the public health of citizens.


Author(s):  
Kaili Chen ◽  
Tianzheng Zhang ◽  
Fangyuan Liu ◽  
Yingjie Zhang ◽  
Yan Song

In recent years, the interest in the relationship between urban green space and residents’ mental health has gradually risen. A number of researchers have investigated the causal relationship and possible mediators between the two, although few have summarized these mediators. For this reason, we searched for relevant studies and filtered them by criteria and quality score, and analyzed the mediators and paths of the impact of urban green space on residents’ mental health. The mediators can be divided into environmental factors, outdoor activity, and social cohesion. From the perspective of heterogeneity, both individual characteristics (e.g., age and gender) and group characteristics (e.g., level of urban development and urban density) of residents are considered to be the cause of various mediating effects. Types of urban green space tend to affect residents’ mental health through different paths. Furthermore, this review discusses the details of each part under the influence paths. Finally, the policy implications for urban green space planning from three mediator levels are put forward based on an analysis of the situation in different countries.


2017 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 277-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shibo Sun ◽  
Xiyan Xu ◽  
Zhaoming Lao ◽  
Wei Liu ◽  
Zhandong Li ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Valid Hasyimi ◽  
Djoko Santoso Abi Suroso

Urban Green Space Development has become a challenging task for city governments especially in Indonesia, due to high prices of land around urban centers. On the other hand, there are inconsistencies between land use and land allocation within the city planning. In Surabaya City, quite a lot of gas stations were built on areas which are originally intended for green open spaces. Surabaya City Municipality is strongly committed to reconvert Gas Station Areas to green open spaces as determined in the plan. Innovative strategies have enabled the city government to reconvert 13 gas stations to public parks. This paper analyzes the implementation process of the Urban Green Space Reconversion Policy, describing the historical details of the issues, the  taking over of land from gas station owners, and the park development and campaigning. Discussion also includes the most influential factors in this success story.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Nhat-Duc Hoang ◽  
Xuan-Linh Tran

Information regarding the current status of urban green space is crucial for urban land-use planning and management. This study proposes a remote sensing and data-driven solution for urban green space detection at regional scale via employment of state-of-the-art metaheuristic and machine learning approaches. Remotely sensed data obtained from Sentinel 2 satellite in the study area of Da Nang city (Vietnam) are used to construct and verify an intelligent model that hybridizes Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA) and support vector machines (SVM). SVM are employed to generalize a decision boundary that separates features characterizing statistical measurements of remote sensing data into two categories of “green space” and “nongreen space”. The MPA metaheuristic is used to optimize the SVM training phase by identifying an appropriate set of the SVM’s hyperparameters including the penalty coefficient and the kernel function parameter. Experimental results show that the proposed model which processes information provided by all of the Sentinel 2 satellite’s spectral bands can deliver a better performance than those obtained from the model based on vegetation indices. With a good classification accuracy rate of roughly 93%, an F1 score = 0.93, and an area under the receiver operating characteristic = 0.98, the newly developed model is a promising tool to assist local authority to obtain up-to-date information on urban green space and develop plans of sustainable urban land use.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 127411
Author(s):  
Qunyue Liu ◽  
Zhipeng Zhu ◽  
Xianjun Zeng ◽  
Zhixiong Zhuo ◽  
Baojian Ye ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Jenny Roe

Mental and behavioral disorders account for approximately 7.4% of the global burden of disease, with depression now the world’s leading cause of disability. One in four people in the world will suffer from a mental health problem at some point in their life. City planning and design holds much promise for reducing this burden of disease, and for offering solutions that are affordable, accessible and equitable. Increasingly urban green space is recognized as an important social determinant of health, with the potential to protect mental health – for example, by buffering against life stressors - as well as relieving the symptom severity of specific psychiatric disorders. Pathways linking urban green space with mental wellbeing include the ability of natural stimuli – trees, water, light patterns – to promote ‘involuntary attention’ allowing the brain to disengage and recover from cognitive fatigue. This article brings together evidence of the positive effects of urban green space on common mental health problems (i.e. stress, anxiety, depression) together with evidence of its role in the symptom relief of specific psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia and psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dementia, attention deficit/hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and autism. Urban green space is a potential force for building mental health: city planners, urban designers, policy makers and public health professionals need to maximize the opportunities in applying green space strategies for both health prevention and in supporting treatment of mental ill health.


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