Conception of Green Infrastructure as a Tool of City Development Planning

Abstract

The role of the greenery in the urban environment is priceless – both for maintaining ecological balance, and for enhancing visually aesthetic quality, as well as home for small habitats and the key to urban identity. The development of greenery structures in a city or part of a city is often chaotic and spontaneous – developing greenery only for certain objects and not linking it with one another. Planning of greenery in the urban environment is influenced by several regulatory documents, which mainly focus on the preservation of the existing greenery structure and the restrictions on the planning of the greenery. Unfortunately, the detailed guidelines for the planning of the greenery are not sufficiently reflected in the existing normative documents. The concept of greenery is one of the tools for urban planning that, together with other planning tools (infrastructure, spatial planning, architectural design, urban planning, economic urban development planning, etc.), forms a single framework for urban planning tools that helps to develop urban environment smoothly and identify priorities. The aim of the research is to develop a model of the concept of greenery of urban areas, which in practice can be used on the Latvian scale, as the planning document of greenery in local governments. The development of greenery plans and concepts has become topical in recent years and more and more municipalities are interested in this planning tool, which helps to plan the distribution of finances for maintaining the structure of greenery and developing new structure. In the last ten years, four concepts of greenery for medium-sized cities have been developed in Latvia.