Designing Urban Green Infrastructures Using Open-Source Data—An Example in Çiğli, Izmir (Turkey)

Abstract

The city of Izmir (Turkey) has experienced one of the most rapid and fastest urbanization processes in the last thirty years; more than 33 thousand hectares of agricultural and seminatural land have been transformed into urban areas, leading to a drastic reduction of biodiversity and hard deployments of the ecosystem service supply. In this perspective, the potential definition of methodologies to design multifunctional green infrastructures is extremely important to challenge the effects of climate change. The aim of this study is to propose an easy and replicable methodology to design a Green Infrastructure at the neighbourhood level in one of the most important districts of Izmir: Çiğli. To this end, we combined historical land-use change analysis (based on Urban Atlas, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service) with environmental and ecosystem mapping in a Geographic Information System environment (ESRI ArcMap 10.8.1) while creating a composite layer based on unweighted overlays of Imperviousness, Tree Cover Density, and Habitat Quality. Results were used to design the Green Infrastructure of Çiğli and suggest context-based strategies for urban adaptation, including Nature-Based Solutions for core, edge, and urban links.