Supply and demand mismatch analysis to improve regulating ecosystem services in Mediterranean urban areas: Insights from four Italian Municipalities

Abstract

Cities are nowadays facing compelling environmental and climatic challenges that threaten human health and well-being; for this reason, enhancing their sustainability and resilience has rapidly ascended to the top of the global and regional political Agenda. The Urban Green Infrastructure represents a key factor in enhancing the environmental quality of cities, and its planning should be steered by a scientifically-sound operationalisation of the Ecosystem Services concept. In this work, we assess the Ecosystem Services mismatch for air quality regulation in four Italian Municipalities (Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Bari), considering the O3 and PM10 pollution; the study frames a geographical gradient (North-South) and has been conducted on a seasonal basis. We propose a composite-indicatorbased approach for estimating the supply and demand of said Ecosystem Services, including the dimensions of air quality and human health, using both geospatial and tabular data. The spatial and temporal features of mismatch allow distinguishing concerns depending on vegetation quantity (green space areas) and quality (functional diversity), structure of urban settlements and cross-cutting criticalities among cities, and to highlight common indicators of mismatch and priority areas for upcoming interventions.We found that northern cities (Milan and Bologna) suffer a high mismatch, as a result of poor air quality and limited vegetation abundance and functional diversity; southern cities experienced lower demand related to air quality; however, the high mismatch is driven by urban settlement structure and population vulnerability. We also found that compact urbanisation, namely dense urban fabric and the increasing buildings’ height, is linked to a marked mismatch regardless of the city’s dimension and geographical location.We believe such an effort is a fundamental step for translating the Ecosystem Services conceptual framework into the development plans of cities, and thus into concrete actions.Plus, as far as we know, this is one of the first studies explicitly linking urban structure indicators (e.g. building heights and compactness of the urban settlements) to the Ecosystem Services’ mismatch.