Transformation pathways towards sustainable urban development by the inclusion of peri-urban farmland in green infrastructure strategies

Werner Rolf

doi:10.3097/lo.202196

Abstract

Urbanization and agricultural land use are two of the main drivers of global changes with effects on ecosystem functions and human wellbeing. Green infrastructure is a new and promising approach in spatial planning contributing to sustainable urban development, but rarely considers spatial and functional potentials of utilizable agricultural land as an integral part. This doctoral thesis addresses this gap and investigates how peri-urban farmland can promote green infrastructure and sustainable urban development. The results contribute to the conceptual understanding of urban green infrastructures as a strategic spatial planning approach that incorporates inner-urban utilizable agricultural land and the agriculturally dominated landscape at the outer urban fringe. Four strategies are introduced for spatial planning with the contribution to a strategically planned multifunctional network. Finally, this thesis sheds light on the opportunities that arise from the integration of peri-urban farmland in the green infrastructure concept to support transformation towards a more sustainable urban development. This work concludes that the linkage of peri-urban farmland with the green infrastructure concept is a promising action field for the development of new pathways for urban transformation towards sustainable urban development. Along with these outcomes, attention is drawn to limitations that remain to be addressed by future research.

Highlights

Land use is one of the primary drivers of global changes with effects on ecosystem functions and human wellbeing (MEA, 2005)
The results strengthen confidence in the proposition that meaningful bundles of multiple functions suitable for Urban GI (UGI) development are strongly related to landscape heterogeneity and its different site characteristics defining agricultural potentials – while some relate to farmland of high productivity others assist on sites of less agricultural productivity
The results show that UGI, as an integrated cross-sectoral spatial planning approach, offers opportunities to contribute to the development of future-oriented pathways to the conservation semi-natural farmland

Summary

Introduction

Land use is one of the primary drivers of global changes with effects on ecosystem functions and human wellbeing (MEA, 2005). Two very recent global assessments – the ‘Global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (IPBES, 2019) and the special report on ‘Climate Change and Land’ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2019) – present compelling evidence of the effects of land use and the need for sustainable land management, underpinning the urgency of the current state and trends and the need for change Both studies identified urbanization and unsustainable agricultural intensification as two of the main drivers of global changes with effects on ecosystem functions and human wellbeing. Utilizable agricultural land consists of all forms of low-intensive and high-intensive farming, whether assigned to UPUA in the narrow or broader sense

Research approach and methods

Key findings

Overarching – farmland and UGI as an arena for sustainability transitions

Conclusions