INTELLIGENT FUZZY DEEP LEARNING FRAMEWORK FOR GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PLANNING TO ALLEVIATE URBAN POLLUTION AND CLIMATE VULNERABILITIES

Urban green infrastructure plays a crucial role in preserving a green urban environment, thus contributing significantly to human health. The absence of such infrastructure can lead to environmental challenges, particularly in the face of escalating global urbanization. Green urban infrastructure proves essential for maintaining cleanliness in urban areas, especially as major cities worldwide grapple with escalating air pollution exacerbated by the inadequate presence of green spaces, green roofs, green walls, and domestic and private gardens emerge as noteworthy contributors to mitigating these challenges. As the global population steadily increases, a collective effort is imperative to enhance green infrastructure and cultivate public awareness to address the pressing issue of air pollution in cities. Green spaces serve as a pivotal indicator of urban verdancy, offering a myriad of benefits, including environmental cleanliness, the creation of recreational spaces, the promotion of health and well-being, the facilitation of children’s mental development, the presentation of aesthetically pleasing urban landscapes, temperature reduction, and pollution mitigation. This comprehensive review analyzed 60-70 studies on urban green infrastructures and their impacts on the urban environment. A library research methodology was used, focusing on literature from Google Scholar published in the last two decades which delves into the multifaceted aspects of urban environmental cleanliness, providing valuable insights for policymakers, and urban planners with a profound understanding of their impacts. Stakeholders can proactively implement measures to enhance cleanliness in the urban environment.

Mitigating urban heat and air pollution considering green and transportation infrastructure

Analysis of urban green infrastructure is used to identify the concepts of its planning, implementation, and management at the level of the whole city as well as its individual parts. Green infrastructure, as a planned network of natural and semi-natural elements in cities, delivers a wide range of ecosystem services and improves urban environmental conditions. Planning the network of green infrastructure becomes a standard part of urban and spatial planning. Implementation strategies of green infrastructure in urban environment include applications of new specific elements and nature-based solutions. Green infrastructure research covers a wide range of topics. Our research focuses on the selected aspects of spatial analysis of green infrastructure in the city of Warsaw: distribution of main public green areas at the urban scale – forests and parks in the urban fabric, the forms of their protection, the use of linear elements of green infrastructure along communication routes, and the implementation of new elements of nature-based solutions in the urban environment – green roofs, green facades, and rain gardens. Based on the analysis of the studied selected aspects, recommendations were formulated for strengthening the interconnectivity of the green infrastructure system at an urban scale and implementation of new green infrastructure elements and in the intensively built-up districts where the number and size of green areas are insufficient.

As resilience strategies have become a prominent orthodoxy in city planning, green infrastructure (GI) is much heralded as a win-win solution for enhanced social-ecological protection from climate risks and impacts. In this paper, we aim to understand whether “green” and “resilient” interventions protect and secure social groups traditionally most at risk of climate impacts and/or least able to adapt to them – or, if they result in maladaptive and inequitable outcomes (i.e, displacement or climate gentrification). Neighborhoods with a higher proportion of lower-income and minority residents have already shown trends of gentrification when benefiting from new green amenities – a process known as green gentrification – but much remains to be understood about the role of resilience, or climate adapted GI, in climate gentrification. Philadelphia, USA, a forerunner and model city in the implementation of green stormwater infrastructure, is used as a case study to examine resilience in relation to urban systems of neighborhood change and historic conditions of uneven development through processes of dis-/re-investment, suburbanization and re-urbanization. Our study uses a quantitative and spatial analytical approach to identify sites of omission and sites of commission in GI plans and interventions, assessing overlapping landscapes of GI, social and ecological vulnerability. Next, we empirically test possible pathways involved in climate gentrification, and further assess differential levels of vulnerability to gentrification. Our findings point to an association between change in poverty levels and racial composition of census tracts in relation to areas of higher concentrations of climate-adapted GI. The paper contributes to reframing resilience research and practices to integrate a deeper understanding of social-ecological insecurities and inequities than currently considered in urban climate adaptation planning. The blog references additional cases where green and resilient infrastructure in the US, Canada and Europe may generate similar outcomes.

Green infrastructure (GI) is known to reduce road air pollution exposure, but their implementation in schools and associated benefits remain under-researched. In this study, two GI solutions, green screen and green gate, were co-designed and installed at a primary school in Guildford using collaborative and participatory methods. By assessing changes in air pollution levels, noise, and public perception before and after GI installation, we aimed to understand their impact on reducing children's exposure and evaluate other co-benefits. Without considering wind direction's effect, a maximum reduction of up to 32%, 10% and 12% in the average daily concentration of PM10 (green gate), PM2.5 (green screen) and PM1 (green gate), respectively, when compared with in-front concentration. The decay in concentration decreases with distance from the GI, and different wind directions result in varying percentage reductions in PM concentration. For the green screen, 'parallel to the screen' and for the green gate, 'away from the gate' wind directions provided the highest PM reduction. The horizontal abatement efficiency of GI varied with PM size, with the highest being PM10. Continuous monitoring behind the green screen revealed a decrease in PM concentration after installation, and this relative concentration varied from 0.29 to 0.90 compared to before installation. The green gate effectively lowered noise by 5dB(A), and the green screen did not report a noticeable impact on noise levels. Most parents perceived the installation of GI in school as significantly decreasing air pollution exposure and slightly reducing noise levels, resembling the changes in their levels observed in monitoring. The successful co-creation and co-implementation of GI interventions and resulting co-benefits underscore the importance of community engagement and participatory approaches in urban planning and environmental management. This study paves the way for the wider-scale application of innovative strategies involving local communities, stakeholders, and policymakers in implementing GI projects to ensure their sustainability and effectiveness.

The phenomenon of rapid urbanization in Ghanaian cities, Accra and Kumasi, has had negative impacts on heightened environmental stressors, such as temperatures, poor air quality, and a decline in public health. In this context, urban green spaces perform essential ecological and social functions that are being progressively acknowledged in international urban planning practice. This study systematically reviews existing literature to synthesize the effects of green spaces on urban microclimates and residents' quality of life with particular reference to Ghana. Using a systematic search of five academic databases, the review collates empirical and theoretical research from 1984 to 2025. Some limitations were realized. Most notably, there was the risk of publication bias as a result of the restriction of grey literature and non-English sources. Secondly, even though there is increased interest in urban environmental planning in Ghana, empirical studies specific to Ghana remain scarce. The findings are that green infrastructure significantly reduces ambient temperatures, improves humidity balance, air quality, and affects wind circulation, and reduces the urban heat island effect. Green infrastructure also benefits physical and mental health, social cohesion, and civic engagement. Disparities in access, particularly among low-income and marginalized populations, represent a significant barrier to achieving equitable urban development. The study highlights the necessity of integrating green spaces into Ghana's urban planning policies as a strategy for enhancing climate resilience, public health, and environmental justice. The policy priorities demand the foregrounding of native vegetation, equitable access, and mainstreaming of green infrastructure into broader sustainability agendas.

Incorporating green infrastructure such as green walls and green roofs as nature-based solutions for the urban environment has the potential to mitigate climate change, enhance climate resilience, increase urban circularity and biodiversity, reduce urban heat island (UHI) and surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensities, reduce energy consumption in buildings, improve air quality, retain rainwater, and enhance human outdoor thermal comfort, health and well-being. In a bilateral project between Serbia and Austria, measurements of the cooling potential of green walls and green roofs are carried out in Novi Sad (Serbia) and Vienna (Austria). The obtained results indicate the cooling potential of these types of nature-based solutions that can provide a more comfortable climate and outdoor thermal comfort conditions in urban areas. Local temperature reductions near green infrastructure (compared to reference locations) were up to 2-3 °C in both cities. However, the cooling intensity depends on the season, time of day, type of green infrastructure, and the availability and type of water used for irrigation of green infrastructure. The obtained results can be used to develop guidelines for green infrastructure design and can be provided to interested stakeholders in their pursuit to create sustainable, resilient, circular, and climate-neutral cities in the future.Acknowledgment: This research was supported by the bilateral project between Serbia and Austria Water demand of Vertical Greening Systems mitigating Urban Heat Islands (project no. 337-00-577/2021-09/32).

The presented study addresses the problem of forming and assessing green urban infrastructure, focusing on the elements of green infrastructure in the largest cities of the Russian Federation.Aim. The study aims to analyze approaches to identifying key elements of green infrastructure and methodological approaches to its assessment.Tasks. The authors determine approaches to highlighting key structural elements of green infrastructure; use statistics to comparatively assess the elements of green infrastructure in the largest Russian cities; identify problems in approaches to assessing key elements of green infrastructure.Methods. This study uses the methods of system analysis and comparison to address the problems of assessing key elements of green urban infrastructure and provides data published on the official websites of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, municipalities, and the Federal State Statistics Service.Results. Key structural elements of green infrastructure are identified and its effects on the urban environment are determined. Methodological approaches to assessing green infrastructure are analyzed, and its key elements in the largest cities of the Russian Federation are comparatively analyzed. The authors identify assessment problems and conclude that it is necessary to update the methodology of approaches to assessing the elements of green infrastructure in order to take into account its results at the stage of urban and spatial planning of territories.Conclusions. The results of the study can be used in developing a methodology for green infrastructure assessment and urban planning.

The integration of green infrastructure (GI) in urban areas is vital for achieving sustainable development, and this article researches this interaction in Tehran, which accommodates more than 9 million inhabitants. In facing the critical challenge of balancing rapid urbanization with environmental sustainability, GI can play a key role, requiring a holistic approach encompassing diverse elements and location-specific strategies. The research adopts a case study approach to map and analyze the location of GI in District 2 of Tehran, which spans an area just west of the city center, stretching up to the northern border of the Tehran municipality. A novel Geographic Information Systems-based methodology is deployed to identify and assess eight distinct GI types, including parks, green roofs, and river corridors. The article concludes that this categorization of GI types can provide a methodology for the comprehensive analysis of GI distribution, which underscores the importance of location-specific GI strategies for mitigating air pollution and fostering urban sustainability. The study provides a valuable case example that can be used in cities with similar urban environments. By identifying spatial disparities in GI performance, context-specific solutions can be developed that can be integrated into the urban planning and development processes to create a network of green spaces that improve air quality, reduce the urban heat island effect, and promote biodiversity. GI can provide a framework for integrating green spaces, urban forests, green roofs, and other nature-based solutions into the urban fabric, thereby enhancing the overall sustainability and resilience of the urban environment. Received: 17 December 2024 | Revised: 17 March 2025 | Accepted: 25 May 2025 Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. Data Availability Statement The GIS data analysis that supports some of the findings of this study are held in a university environment. Further enquiries can be made via the corresponding author. Author Contribution Statement Seyedeh Zahra Hosseini: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Rojin Raofi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization. Shayesteh Hamidkhaniha: Conceptualization, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Farhad Daneshgar: Conceptualization, Software, Investigation, Resources, Writing - original draft, Visualization. Martin Wynn: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.

This paper explores the integration of environmental priorities into participatory budgeting (PB) processes in selected European cities, with a focus on Poland, Spain, and Portugal. Participatory budgeting enables citizens to directly influence how municipal funds are allocated, providing a democratic platform for the development of sustainable urban projects. Through a review of literature and case studies, the paper examines how PB contributes to environmental initiatives such as green infrastructure, waste management, energy efficiency, sustainable transport, and climate resilience. Case studies from Warsaw and Gdańsk in Poland, Barcelona and Valencia in Spain, and Lisbon and Porto in Portugal illustrate the diverse ways cities have used PB to fund projects like community gardens, green roofs, riverbank restoration, and bike infrastructure. These initiatives not only address local ecological challenges but also promote civic engagement, environmental justice, and long-term sustainability. The findings highlight the transformative potential of participatory budgeting as a tool for inclusive urban governance and environmental planning in selected European cities. The main objective is to examine how PB can serve as a democratic tool for environmental governance, promoting sustainability, resilience, and citizen engagement. The study adopts a qualitative case study approach supported by literature review and document analysis. It evaluates municipal participatory budgeting initiatives with a specific focus on green infrastructure, waste management, energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, and climate adaptation. Academic sources, city budget reports, and environmental planning documents were analyzed to identify the environmental impact and governance models of PB in each city. Participatory budgeting in European cities increasingly funds environmental projects, such as green roofs, urban gardens, tree planting, sustainable transport, and flood prevention. The active involvement of citizens in decision-making ensures that environmental solutions are locally relevant, socially inclusive, and ecologically impactful. Results show that PB contributes to improved urban resilience, environmental justice, and long-term sustainability by aligning ecological goals with democratic processes. This study is among the first to comparatively examine environmental projects under PB frameworks in Eastern and Southern Europe. It offers new insights into how participatory governance mechanisms can shape urban environmental policy and increase community ownership of green transitions. Policymakers and city planners can use participatory budgeting as a strategic instrument for environmental planning, ensuring that public investments are both citizen-driven and environmentally sound. The paper provides examples and recommendations for replicating successful PB-based environmental initiatives across diverse urban contexts.

Green roofs—rooftops that are partially or completely covered with vegetation growing in soil medium over a waterproof membrane—have gained momentum over the past six years as building owners recognize their advantages over conventional roofing in terms of better energy efficiency and reduced rain runoff. Now local governments are exploring incentives for moving the practice into the mainstream. A look at cities that are leading the country in green roof coverage reveals a growing range of policy tools.

In the context of urban land-use growth and the consequent impacts on the environment, green spaces provide ecosystem services for human health. The ecosystem services concept synthesises human–environmental interactions through a series of combined components of biodiversity and abiotic elements, linking ecological processes and functions. The concept of green infrastructure (GI) in the urban context emphasises the quality and quantity of urban and peri-urban green spaces and natural areas. In dense urban contexts, the applications of GI are limited and not applied to the potential urban spaces such as roofs and gardens. Often, roofs are characterised by impermeable paved surfaces with negative effects on human well-being, whereas garden designs do not consider social needs and environmental interactions. The role of urban stressors or the urban context as a driving force or pressure of urban green space is not always well understood and employed in the planning of green spaces. This is partly due to a knowledge gap between different science disciplines that operate on different scales, from single processes of the plants (which focus on plant responses to environmental stresses affecting human well-being) to urban ecosystems (which focus on the biodiversity and urban space planning–human well-being relationship). This can create a paradox, as green spaces that are not adequately designed might not produce the expected effects. In this paper, an overview of benefits and limitations of applying the ecosystem services approach when designing green spaces is presented. The focus is on the main urban ecosystem services provided by green roofs and community gardens such as GI that can represent strategies to provide ecological and social multifunctionality to waterproofed surfaces connected to the buildings and low-exploited gardens being the main areas that affect dense urban settlements, and thus, increasing the ecosystem services in the urban environment, such as reducing the Urban Heat Island, as well as flooding events. Specifically, the paper highlights (i) feedback between ecological processes and functions that support ecosystem services, (ii) urban environmental stresses in relation to disservices that these can create for human well-being and (iii) key issues that should be considered in the planning and design of urban ecosystem services. Such a new vision of urban ecosystem services highlights the need to look at GI as an active part of the urban space design in the built environment.

A sustainability comparison of green infrastructure interventions using emergy evaluation

Based on the analysis of impervious surface cover and water balance studies, it is argued that conventional, separately-sewered first-generation and alternative second-generation sustainable drainage systems (SUDS) cannot provide a fully sustainable surface water management approach for urban catchment planning. An extended approach based on the introduction of micro-and meso-vegetative SUDS systems into a wider green infrastructure (GI) framework is advocated to effectively address on-site and catchment urban surface water issues. The approach is based on the integrated planning implementation of street ‘greening’, with optimisation of existing biofiltration SUDS solutions, together with green roofs, downspout disconnection and sub-catchment riparian corridors to achieve a minimum 25–30% canopy cover level. A ‘leaf-out’ inventory procedure using GIS and satellite imagery can be employed to assess potential vegetative SUDS locations and types, and their likely impact upon the urban water cycle and receiving water health. However, there is a need to ensure that GI elements are incorporated into planning approaches and protocols for urban drainage infrastructure provision.

Many cities worldwide are using re-greening strategies to help reverse urbanization patterns that aggravate environmental issues. Green infrastructure (GI) has become a significant and effective strategy to address environmental problems. To better understand GI, this study uses CiteSpace to analyze 5420 published papers in the field of GI on the Web of Science database from 1990-2020. This bibliometric analysis will help new scholars and researchers to better understand the current status and trends in GI research, as well as identify further research needed in the field. This study evaluated research on GI trends according to publication amounts, keywords, journals, disciplines, countries, institutions, and authors. Results show that, first, GI research has experienced rapid growth since 2014. Second, GI, ecosystem services, and city are the top three keywords related to GI research, with green roof as the keyword with the strongest linkage. Third, Sustainability, Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, and Landscape and Urban Planning are the top three journals publishing GI research. Fourth, the top three disciplines researching GI are environmental science, engineering, and science and technology. Fifth, the USA is the top ranked country in terms of the number of published GI-related papers (1514 papers), followed by China (730 papers) and England (546 papers). Sixth, the US Environmental Protection Agency (84 papers) is the top institution in terms of publications, followed by the Chinese Academy of Science (83 papers) and the Swedish University of Agriculture (66 papers). Finally, D. Haase has the most published articles (29 papers), followed by S. Pauleit (28 papers) and P. Angelstam (26 papers). These findings indicate that GI has developed significantly in the last 30 years, with a high probability for increased growth in the future.