Benefits Of Open Space Research Articles

Open Spaces in a Institutional Campus Leads to Active Environment

Institutional campuses serve as dynamic hubs for learning, collaboration, and community engagement. This paper explores the pivotal role of open spaces within these environments in cultivating activity and vitality. By examining various design elements and their impact on human behaviour, this study elucidates how the strategic integration of open spaces can enhance campus life and promote physical, social, and intellectual engagement. Through case studies and analysis of existing literature, the paper highlights the multifaceted benefits of open spaces, including improved mental well-being, enhanced creativity, and strengthened social connections. Additionally, considerations for inclusive design and sustainable practices are discussed to ensure that open spaces contribute to an equitable and resilient campus environment. Ultimately, this research underscores the significance of thoughtful planning and design interventions in creating vibrant and active institutional campuses that foster holistic development and enrich the overall student experience. Keywords :- Campus ; Open Spaces ; Environment ; Green Space

Maximizing the social-economy impacts of urban green space in several cities in Indonesia

Trees in urban green space areas serve not only aesthetic purposes but also various ecological functions, including filtering air pollutants, improving groundwater quality, and generating biodiversity of flora and fauna. However, the presence of urban Urban Green Space (UGS) must equal 30% of the urban area, which is still constrained by regulations and community participation. Therefore, this paper aims to capture an overview of the existing UGS in several regions in Indonesia by using qualitative methods., which included over ten locations in Lampung and several cities throughout Indonesia for comparison, yielded several findings that can hopefully be used to inform the development of UGS policies. The findings demonstrate the numerous benefits of open space, particularly mental health, nature conservation, social interaction, and economic development. The critical nature of UGS, particularly in regencies/municipalities, requires increased awareness and effective management by involving as many stakeholders as possible, including the private sector and the community as users. The implication of this research is, in a sustainability context, with the need to instill sustainable behavior in users and to stimulate economic growth, a business model based on environmental stewardship is required, specifically the circular business model

INDICATORS OF OPEN SPACE QUALITY FOR CHILDREN IN HIGH- DENSITY SETTLEMENTS

Open spaces are essential for city sustainability because they offer various functions. One of the benefits of open spaces is their use as outdoor space for physical activities or as learning areas for children. The purpose of this paper is to identify the indicators to measure and define open spaces appropriate for children in urban high-density settlements. This study was conducted in the periurban area of Tembalang, Semarang, Indonesia. In order to determine appropriate indicators, this study made use of environmental characteristics as indicators. The result showed that security, safety, comfort, and accessibility were essential factors of appropriate open spaces for children in urban high-density settlements. The contribution of this paper is to promote the importance of open space for children’s activities.

Enhancing the usability and benefits of open space for older people in regional Australia

ABSTRACTOpen space planning and design can play an important role in ameliorating health and social issues associated with the increasing ageing population in regional Australia. We undertook a case study at Albury, NSW using an online survey, focus groups and park observations to explore the way older people (>65) value and use open spaces. While exhibiting diverse views, older Australians’ voices provided recommendations that can maximise the benefits of open space. Well-designed facilities support walking and other physical activity, social interaction and neighbourliness, and potentially reduce feelings of vulnerability. Issues associated with access are complex and require early and ongoing strategic planning. Ensuring open space is responsive to these needs requires both State and local government development and environmental planning and attention to the design and maintenance of park microfeatures.

Remaking Nigeria’s Urbanism: Assessing and Redressing the Dearth of Open Spaces in Benin City

Unplanned land use in most Nigerian cities has meant that all urban land needs are not adequately provided for within their landscapes. Open spaces are either conspicuously missing or inadequate. There is a tendency for existing open spaces to be lost to urban development pressure and a disregard for zoning. This paper identifies available and accessible open spaces in Benin City and assesses their adequacy using as a guide standards established in two selected international jurisdictions, discusses the potential benefits of open space to the city on the one hand and its residents on the other given the incipient impacts of global warming and climate change, and the prospects of mitigation by greening the city even in its already built-up state. Data is sourced from journals, reports, archival records and inspections of the urban environment. The findings confirm a great dearth of open spaces as well as deteriorating urban environmental conditions which have implications for health, well-being and urban sustainability. The recommendations are that future expansions of the city space incorporate adequate provisions for open spaces, whilst within the existing built-up city, solutions be sought in the creation of greenways, green paths, private green spaces, promoting street trees and the conversion of brownfield sites to green areas.

A methodology for the evaluation of the human-bioclimatic performance of open spaces

The purpose of this paper is to present a simple methodology to improve the evaluation of the human-biometeorological benefits of open spaces. It is based on two groups of new indices using as basis the well-known PET index. This simple methodology along with the accompanying indices allows a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the climatic behavior of the selected sites. The proposed methodology was applied in a human-biometeorology research in the city of Athens, Greece. The results of this study are in line with the results of other related studies indicating the considerable influence of the sky view factor (SVF), the existence of the vegetation and the building material on human-biometeorological conditions. The proposed methodology may provide new insights in the decision-making process related to urban open spaces’ best configuration.

Nicola Dempsey, Harry Smith and Mel Burton (eds): Place-keeping: open space management in practice

What is the relationship between capital investments in and the long-term use and benefits of open spaces? Well-intentioned expenditure on high-quality design in our urban fabric has frequently provided short-term results, but has often failed to maintain their impact over time. These bright new spaces have the habit of fading over time, sometimes into significant disrepair. Dempsey, Smith and Burton argue that an emphasis on place-making without full consideration of the long-term management of these open spaces is misguided and may lead to long-term costs in other areas, such as health care, in the opening and closing chapters of this edited volume. Place-keeping is an excellent attempt to address the shortcomings of place-making over time by creating a framework to think about long-term maintenance and management. It is a well-illustrated, accessible and succinct book that provides a cogent introduction to place-keeping. Building on work undertaken for an EU funded project: Making Places Profitable— Public and Private Open Spaces—this slight, edited, volume tackles the short-termism of capital investments in public spaces without planning for the long-term social, economic and environmental management of the space. A new institutionalist perspective is adopted as the theoretical framework to understand the dimensions of place-keeping across different contexts in the EU and illustrative examples elsewhere. Resultantly there is a repeated focus on the resources, norms and ideas that determine forms of place-keeping. The framework is briefly explained in chapter two and addressed intermittently throughout the book, before being explicitly tied together in the final chapter. More than a simple critique of place-making, Place-Keeping addresses a number of key questions including: who should be involved in it; where should finance come from; who shapes decisions; and where do attitudes towards place-keeping come from? Place-making is not dismissed as insignificant, but is relocated within a long-term approach to open

Is there a double-dividend from anti-sprawl policies?

This paper examines the welfare effects of anti-sprawl policies, such as development tax, in a simple spatial explicit urban model with two market failures – urban decline at the city core and underprovision of open space amenities at the urban fringe – and pre-existing distortionary property tax, used to fund public services and improvements to mitigate urban decline. Consistent with prior double-dividend literature, there is a tax interaction effect that occurs between the development tax and the pre-existing property tax. However, there are two fundamental differences between the tax interaction effect identified here and that of prior literature. Ours one has two components: First, there is a cost-side tax interaction effect that is ‘spatially’ concentrated at the urban fringe, as only agents at the urban fringe alter their behavior in response to the development tax. Second, there is also a benefit-side tax interaction effect, as increases in open space at the urban fringe are capitalized into housing prices throughout the city. In contrast to prior literature, we find that the empirical importance of the combined tax interaction effect is of substantially less importance and, as a consequence, the likelihood of a ‘double-dividend’ is higher than in prior studies. Further, we show that the development tax should be part of the local tax system, even in the absence of open space benefits.

Space Matters: Historic Drivers and Turning Points in Israel's Open Space Protection Policy

The article considers the history of open space preservation in Israel from the inception of the state until the present. The primary modes for protecting open spaces are assessed: nature reserves, forests, and agriculturally designated lands. While present frameworks ensure that reserves and forests remain well-protected, there has been significant erosion in the normative protection of agricultural lands, reflected in their steady decline. Three encouraging recent developments are considered. The first is a new masterplan for Israel (number 35) that was approved by the government in 2005. While not without its flaws, the plan constitutes an important formal open space for Israel. Economic analysis, previously unexploited, is also increasingly quantifying the benefits of open spaces. Relentless activism across the country has produced a litany of achievements for open space preservation advocates. The article closes with a review of present challenges to open spaces including illegal construction in the agricultural and Bedouin sectors as well as the isolated settlement program. While Israeli public policy has made open space preservation a higher priority, as population density rises, the demand for land promises make open space preservation an ongoing national challenge.

The Influence of Recreation and Amenity Benefits of Open Space on Residential Development Patterns

The kind of open space benefit, recreation, or amenity, in our spatial city model determines in part how open space influences residential development. Our model also determines the exact total social benefits of open-space policies by summing together the change in household welfare and landowner profits. Simulations examine open space benefit improvements, additional open space, housing durability, and migration, and the location patterns of two income groups. We show that the high income group is not attracted to open space if higher income makes housing demand rise faster than recreation demand.

Conservation Easements: Permanent Shields against Sprawl

Abstract Conservation easements are an effective tool for maintaining working forests, preserving environmental values, and protecting communities from excessive development pressure. The Society of American Foresters (SAF) supports conservation easements as one tool for ensuring sustainable forest management. Selling or donating conservation easements may allow landowners who are committed to sustainable management to resist pressure to sell their property to developers. Similarly, in the face of pressure to withdraw working forests from active management, conservation easements offer a way to provide adequate environmental and open-space benefits while allowing continued timber harvesting.

Urban Sprawl: Diagnosis and Remedies

This article argues that urban spatial expansion results mainly from three powerful forces: a growing population, rising incomes, and falling commuting costs. Urban growth occurring purely in response to these fundamental forces cannot be faulted as socially undesirable, but three market failures may distort their operation, upsetting the allocation of land between agricultural and urban uses and justifying criticism of urban sprawl. These are the failure to account for the benefits of open space, excessive commuting because of a failure to account for the social costs of congestion, and failure to make new development pay for the infrastructure costs it generates. Precise remedies for these market failures are two types of development taxes and congestion tolls levied on commuters. Each of these remedies leads to a reduction in the spatial size of the city.

The Economic Value of Open Space: A Review and Synthesis.

/ Communities increasingly face development pressures that can irreversibly alter open space lands. While the monetary costs and benefits of development are typically known, the corresponding values of natural lands are complex and difficult to measure. This paper reviews different concepts of economic value in relation to open space, describes methods for quantifying these values, and presents examples of each from published literature. Open space benefits accruing to citizens as market values or consumers' surplus include market and enhancement values, production values, natural systems value, use and nonuse values, and various intangible values. Economic impacts that open space lands have on local communities and economies include fiscal impacts on municipal budgets, expenditures from open space-related activities, and impacts from employment and tax revenues. These values are not universally present within a given community, nor are they quantitatively additive. However, a comprehensive consideration of the multiple values of open space will better inform community decisions about land conservation and development. KEY WORDS: Conservation; Economic value; Land use; Open space; Zoning

Public Preferences regarding the Goals of Farmland Preservation Programs: Comment

In a recent article in this journal, Kline and Wichelns (1996) (hereafter KW) argued that public (government) farmland preservation programs would be more efficient if broadened to include not only agricultural productive and lifestyle criteria, but also open space criteria as preservation objectives. While the public may prefer the open space benefits more than the agrarian benefits, much of the enabling legislation of public preservation programs relegate open space objectives as secondary to the agrarian ones. Therefore, by broadening the legislative scope of these public programs to include the multiple objectives of agricultural productive, lifestyle, aesthetics, environment, and open space, targeted land for preservation would be more efficient (and effective) in meeting the public's multiple objectives. Often, the nonagrarian objectives are highlighted by program proponents to gain public support. As evidence on the ranking of land preservation preferences, KW collected qualitative data from Rhode Island residents on reasons

Sustaining Open Space Benefits in the Northeast: An Evaluation of the Conservation Reserve Program

A conceptual model is developed to analyze agricultural landowners' decisions to continue agricultural use, participate in conservation programs, or sell land. The model serves as the framework for an econometric study of participation in the Conservation Reserve Program by Northeastern landowners. Results identify significant differences in enrollment between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties in the region, and indicate that the Conservation Reserve Program is relatively unimportant to agricultural landowners in metropolitan counties. Also, the results indicate that if open space benefits are desired in metropolitan counties, alternative policies (e.g., purchase of development rights, zoning legislation) may be required.

Some Different Meanings Attached to a City Park and Community Gardens

How do people use and value urban open spaces such us city parks and community gardens? Are the values attached to open spaces by different groups such as users and non-users similar or different? Do officials charged with managing urban recreation have the same perceptions of the benefits of open spaces as do city residents who use or pass by them? These questions formed the basis of a comparative study of an adjacent city park and community gardens in Sacramento during 1982-85. The study compares the attitudes of users, non-users, and government officials toward a public park and user-managed community gardens. The historical development, planning and design process, management and maintenance, governmental perceptions, site use, and user and non-user attitudes associated with each site are compared. The different meanings attached by users, non-users, and government officials to both sites are contrasted. In conclusion, a conceptual framework for understanding the social context of parks versus gardens in cities is presented.