Abstract
The concept of Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) has emerged in response to the need to highlight and ensure access to the multifunctional benefits of green spaces in changing cityscapes. Recent literature reviews around UGI have focused on environmental benefits and services, and the management of these spaces has been comparatively neglected. In addition to this, the core conceptual and practical research around UGI management has been produced in the Global North, and far less research has been generated in Latin America, despite the contextual challenges and opportunities brought by this rapidly urbanizing and diverse region. In response, this trilingual systematic review asks: What are the research trends in terms of topics, and case studies that characterize UGI management research in Latin America? Which management types are the focuses of this research? A total of 47 publications, found through Scopus, Web of Science and SciELO, were subjected to both quantitative and qualitative assessment. The research was both geographically concentrated and predominantly recent. Government-led initiatives made up the highest proportion of the research, and more than half of the publications described local government as the principle actor in the management of the UGI studied. Community-run initiatives were consistent across the temporal span of the articles found, and their established presence was supported by the qualitative review. Findings also revealed a directional push towards governance practices, but significant obstacles in the form of: weak local government; divisions driven by a lack of context-sensitive approaches to informal settlements and socioeconomic segregation, and a management discourse that jarred with urban practices by indigenous communities. Through demonstrating the contribution of existing literature on UGI management in Latin America, this review highlights the need for further published research on the region.
Highlights
This study addresses the following research questions: What are the research trends in terms of topics and case studies that characterize Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) management research in Latin America? Which types of management are the focuses of this research? A trilingual systematic review was conducted across three major academic databases
With an aim to fill the knowledge gap around UGI management publications in Latin America, this study has centered on the research questions: What are the research trends in terms of topics and case studies that characterize UGI management research in Latin America? Which management types are the focuses of this research? An extensive trilingual systematic review was conducted using a wide range of search terms, and 47 publications were identified and subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis
The research that was found was predominantly recent, and the temporal trends identified were more pronounced than those seen by Boulton et al (2018), in a review of research on global greenspace provision, and OrdóñezBarona et al (2020) on urban forestry research in Latin America: over 80% of the studies were published between January 2010 and May 2020
Summary
Alongside the more general term “Green Infrastructure,” UGI has been subject to different applications and diverse definitions, as a result of which there has been a concerted effort to map and consolidate usage of the term in previous years (Wang and Banzhaf, 2018; Badiu et al, 2019; Seiwert and Rößler, 2020). According to these reviews, multifunctionality and connectivity can be understood as the main characteristics associated with the concept. The concept can refer to the network as a whole or its individual components such as parks, gardens, cemeteries, and urban forests and agriculture
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