Abstract
The 21st century challenges, in particular those of climate change, population growth, air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic global health crisis, demand greater emphasis on infrastructure facilities capable of keeping pace with population needs in well-being, health and economic prosperity. Green infrastructure aimed to intensify ecological processes in built-up areas and deliver vital ecosystem services is of a key significance for Russia, one of the most urbanized countries in the world. The article is dedicated to the issue of providing cities sustainability through creating a basic element of the urban green infrastructure—a public green network—by incorporating and linking a variety of already existing urban environmental components, both spatial and linear, such as natural areas, squares, parks, streets, boulevards, embankments and others. The territory of the case study is Krasnodar region located in the southwestern part of the North Caucasus, the warmest region of Russia characterized by highly varied urban areas. The authors propose the multiple criteria method for evaluating the existing GreenPS and creating a GreenPS framework for six cities located in Krasnodar region both on the southern seaward part and on the northern steppe part. This approach is focused on the sustainable development of the cities, adaptation to climate change and the prevention of local risks with respect to the preservation of ecosystem functions and cultural heritage. The methodology includes three stages: investigating and evaluating the present state of the existing urban GreenPS; defining sustainability potential; and the submission of master plan proposals for the improvement and further development and management of the GreenPS network implementing nature-based solutions. In addition, it follows seven main integral criteria, namely, Accessibility, Density, Sufficiency, Continuity, Diversity, Value and Clean and Sanitary, illustrated by ray diagrams. The results of the study show good potential for construction in Krasnodar region cities of an efficient GreenPS network integrating ecological and social city components. The flexibility of the method proposed makes it replicable for any other city aimed at creating a GreenPS network in sustainable, climate-change-adapted cities.
Highlights
Nowadays, local living environments are perceived as key instruments to ensure health and wellbeing to people
The main attention was dedicated to creative renewing, reconstruction and integration of the existing and already developed public spaces aimed to meet the objectives of the green public network development, such as renewing streets to be used as the green corridors linking green public space (GreenPS); incorporating green route “Sochi” into the GreenPS network; reconstructing the seaside embankments; arranging the green corridor along the Psahe River; and building eco-parks using existing natural green places
The introduced concept of Green Public Spaces (GreenPS) is innovative but necessary when speaking about the sustainability of Russian cities and the response to global climate change challenges
Summary
Local living environments are perceived as key instruments to ensure health and wellbeing to people. The green city concept based on multifunctional land use responds to today’s most important environmental, economic and social challenges, such as climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity protection and social cohesion, which increased in the pandemic [1,2,3]. In Russia and across the world, planning a green flexible city is in a special focus due to the associated benefits that positively impact people’s health, comfort and safety [4,5,6,7]. Urban green spatial planning advances from creating landscaped areas with social and aesthetic value to the consideration urban green as a kind of modern urban multifunctional infrastructure which supports both social, economic and ecological processes and allows cities to become more polycentric [8,9]. The possibility to locate housing, work and leisure along and around ample landscaped public space which allows free transit movement without congestion and with guaranteed quality of healthy well-being surely remains relevant after the pandemic and for future generations [10,11,12,13]
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