Mapping and Assessing Green Infrastructure Connectivity in European City Regions

Karsten Rusche,Rico Stichmann,Mario Reimer

doi:10.3390/su11061819

Karsten Rusche, Rico Stichmann + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11061819

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Abstract

Urban green infrastructure is becoming an increasingly important concept for sustainable urban planning. In the past, planning practice and research have worked on defining principles and suggesting relevant indicators to promote the concept. While there has been a focus on multifunctionality of green infrastructure elements, the connectivity principle is underrepresented, especially in urban research. Therefore, this paper suggests land use indicators to map and assess the degree of connectivity of open spaces within the urban realm. Empirical results are presented for three European case studies. The relevance of connectivity indicators for urban green infrastructure planning is highlighted and linked to future needs for improving strategic urban planning.

Highlights

In planning research, the concept of green infrastructure has gained a lot of attention in the last decade, especially in the context of sustainable urban development [1]
There is a general need for better green infrastructure mapping approaches that acknowledge site-specific characteristics [13]. In addition to these urban green infrastructure connectivity approaches [6,14], this paper suggests a set of spatial indicators that help evaluate the degree of connectivity between elements of urban green infrastructure
As discussed in the previous section, the focus of our research is twofold: on the one hand, we want to capture the connectivity of urban green infrastructure, and on the other hand, we are interested in comparing the structure of built UGI of European city regions with respect to their planning context

Summary

Introduction

The concept of green infrastructure has gained a lot of attention in the last decade, especially in the context of sustainable urban development [1]. Many authors see great potential for high quality urban green infrastructure (UGI) to deal with a variety of current and future challenges that city regions have to cope with, ranging from stormwater management, climate adaptation, and urban quality of life, to providing healthy neighbourhoods [2] This range of expectations on the green infrastructure concept is rooted in the generally broad understanding of what “green infrastructure” is or can be. UGI subsumes street trees, pocket parks, and small streams up to big parks, cemeteries, sporting facilities, and lakes within the urban realm This definition includes modern vertical green elements, such as green walls or green roofs. Since it is seen as infrastructure, UGI deals with green links (pathways, cycle tracks) between the several possible hubs of green infrastructure provision [5]

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