Green Infrastructure Projects Research Articles

IMPACT OF NEIGHBORHOOD GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE ON ACCESS TO SOCIAL CAPITAL ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE

Abstract While the impact of neighborhood characteristics on access to social capital is well established, less is known about how neighborhood landscape design interventions play a role in shaping access to this resource and how this varies across the life course. In this study we examined the association between age and perceived impact of recently installed neighborhood block-scale green infrastructure (GI) on frequency of social interactions with neighbors. We also examined age variation in how alternative GI designs were perceived (e.g., how well cared for), and how these perceptions were associated with the anticipated impact on frequency of neighbor interactions. Data are from the Neighborhood, environment, and water research collaborations for green infrastructure (NEW-GI) project based in Detroit, MI. Four neighborhood GI interventions were installed in two Detroit neighborhoods in 2016. Surveys were conducted with residents living around the interventions in 2017-18 (n=171), and in nearby neighborhoods (n=145). Age was significantly associated with perceived impact of the landscape interventions on frequency of social interactions with neighbors. Specifically, older adults were significantly more likely to report that the landscape interventions that they were most familiar with resulted in increased frequency of interactions with their neighbors. Further, design alternatives perceived as more well cared for were anticipated to result in greater increases in the frequency of interactions with neighbors among older compared to younger adults. Results suggest neighborhood landscape interventions can improve access to social capital particularly among older adults, and perceptions of landscape care play a role in this process.

Benefit-Cost Analysis of Green Infrastructure Investments: Application to Small Urban Projects in Hinesville, GA

Small scale urban green infrastructure projects can provide local ecological services that should be accounted for in project assessment. Benefits assessment can be expensive and time consuming; benefit transfer provides an economical alternative, but the quality of the analysis depends upon available data. A best-case scenario for many applications of benefit transfer is to utilize a conforming meta-analysis. In this paper, we use the meta-analysis of Bockarjova, et al. (2020) to predict ecological benefits of small scale urban green infrastructure investments in Hinesville, GA. In doing so, we implement a censoring procedure on the benefit transfer function to permit analysis of small-scale (less than one-hectare) projects. We find evidence of substantial net economic benefits, with estimates ranging from $738,312 to over $5.5 million; positive benefit-to-cost ratios are robust to substantial cost increases (4 times the estimated costs). We provide guidance for how to apply these methods to other contexts.

The politics of green infrastructure: A discrete choice experiment with Flemish local decision-makers

Being confronted with increasing and expanding urbanisation and the loss of natural green spaces, our living environment is threatened more and more by the effects of global climate change. Green infrastructure is often thought of as the solution to increase climate resilience and reinforce the quality of the lived environment simultaneously. While the benefits, or ecosystem services, that are generated through green infrastructure have been studied intensively, forces that influence green infrastructure decision-making have been far less subjected to thorough research. In this study a discrete choice experiment was conducted with local decision makers in Flemish municipalities to reveal crucial factors in the decision process applied to green infrastructure projects. Flanders is one of the most densely built regions in Europe, stressing the urgency to understand local spatial decision factors to guarantee green space. 568 decision makers active in the local administration of 235 Flemish municipalities participated in the experiment, set in a hypothetical neighbourhood park. Every choice alternative exists of five attributes: investment cost, maintenance cost, deferred investment, recreational value, and climate impact. We find that barriers hampering Flemish munipalities' GI implementation, differ over size of the municipality: smallers municipalities are more affected by knowledge gaps, while larger municipalities are experiencing prioritization issues. Results from hierarchical Bayes choice models indicate that municipal decisions on green infrastructure are highly – almost solely - cost-driven, rarely consider the full range of benefits, and centre around short-term and immediate arguments. Moreover, interaction models reveal that a municipalities' financial result is a key determinant of its willingness to invest in public greening and consider long term benefits, suggesting that GI is a luxury good. The results expose some of the heuristics in GI decision making and can be used to inform higher authorities on ways to overcome barriers towards informed decision-making and to facilitate GI investment.

The Impact of Urban Green-infrastructure Development on the Price of Surrounding Real Estate: A Case Study of Taichung City’s Central District

Amid increasingly common extreme climate events and urban heat-island effects, cities are at increased risk from a range of natural disasters. Green infrastructure emphasizes coordination and mutual benefit between, on the one hand, human construction and development, and the natural environment on the other, and can be adjusted to mitigate disaster risks. However, in addition to public-sector policies, urban green-infrastructure development requires incentives for private-sector implementation. This study examines the impact on the value of local real estate of three green-infrastructure projects in the Central District of Taichung City, Taiwan, both during and after their construction. Its findings show that green-infrastructure development can indeed drive-up urban real-estate prices, with slightly different rates of increase, according to type of real estate themselves. The knowledge of this dynamic provided by this study should make such development attractive to the private sector, and thus ultimately aid disaster prevention and improve the overall quality of the urban environment.

The Effectiveness of Centralized versus Decentralized Green Infrastructure in Improving Water Quality and Reducing Flooding at the Catchment Scale

Green infrastructure (GI), such as green roofs, rain gardens, and porous pavement, is a stormwater management strategy designed to capture rain where it falls and allow it to soak into the ground rather than running off into a stream channel, thus reducing flooding and improving water quality. While there has been a lot of research into the performance of individual GI projects, much less is known about its performance at the catchment scale. This study uses a US EPA SWMM model to examine the effectiveness of GI in improving water quality and reducing flooding at the catchment scale. Results show that in the study catchment, a large centralized wetland was the most effective at reducing and slowing peak discharge. Infiltration based decentralized GI best reduced flood volumes. In addition to changes in effective impervious area, flood volumes were also reduced due to differences in drainage network structure and modifications to the pervious portions of the catchment. Reductions in flood volumes resulted in lower pollutant loads, except for pollutants that are particularly efficiently removed by wetlands. Routing runoff through a large, centralized wetland removed more nitrate load than letting rain infiltrate where it falls.

The Dynamics of Sources of Knowledge on the Nature of Innovation in the Public Sector: Understanding Incremental and Transformative Innovations in Local Governments

AbstractUnderstanding the effects of different sources of knowledge acquisition in public organizations has become widely promoted for overcoming sociotechnical challenges through innovation. This study divided the sources of knowledge into external and internal learning mechanisms to assess their divergent effects on incremental and transformative innovations in 82 local governments involved in green and blue infrastructure projects. First, the study tests whether more diverse external sources of knowledge acquisition are more effective in increasing transformative innovation than internal learning mechanisms. The second proposition tests whether internal changes in organizational routines are associated with incremental rather than transformative innovation. Results from mediation analysis using structural equation models confirm that the initial negative effect of external and internal learning mechanisms on innovation can be eliminated, on the one hand, by engaging in more diverse cross-sector collaborations to increase transformative innovations and, on the other hand, by focusing on changing administrative routines to support incremental innovation.

The public and its assets: Performing appraisal and advocacy for blue and green infrastructure in London, England

London's water sector professionals seek to secure public funds for blue and green infrastructure projects while also engaging with local advocates for river improvement. This paper argues that current project appraisal practice forms a barrier to aligning public investment with local demand because justifying investment requires the enactment of a utilitarian public good that is at odds with the non-instrumental values motivating local advocacy. Drawing on qualitative evidence and performativity theory, we show how the appraisal practices of water sector professionals and the environmental advocacy of London residents both enact publics in different arenas of water management: appraisal enacts a general public to secure funding, while advocacy enacts a particular public that serves to articulate local demand for environmental improvement. Whereas the performativity of a general public works through demonstrating nature's economic value to people, the performativity of local publics is animated by people's responsibility towards nature. We find that the general public that is enacted through cost-benefit analysis legitimizes public expenditure on readily demonstrable economic benefits, such as flood risk mitigation, while withholding funds from the water quality improvement valued by local publics. Comparing the performativities of general and local publics, we discuss the conditions under which appraisal and advocacy practices enact their respective underlying values. We conclude that the current appraisal practice frustrates the delivery of blue and green infrastructure projects that would respond to local demand for improving rivers.

Negotiating the green obstacle course: Ranking priorities and problems for municipal green infrastructure implementation

This paper sets out the results of a study exploring, and ranking in order of perceived significance, the priorities and obstacles faced by smaller cities when implementing green infrastructure (GI) projects. The study captured the views of 49 municipal officers and elected representatives in cities of less than 500,000 population across four countries in northwest Europe, using a closed card sorting methodology as part of a semi-structured interview format. The results show a clear hierarchy in priorities, with particular attention paid to anthropocentric benefits to residents, especially the importance of aesthetics and liveability as a key objective in GI delivery, and the desirability of securing visible benefit to residents within the electoral cycle; longer-term objectives linked to environmental and economic challenges, although acknowledged in corporate policies, attract a lower priority when it comes to delivery, and may encounter trade-offs against other desired benefits. The greatest obstacle to GI delivery is not funding, as found in other studies, although this remains significant; rather, it is difficulty of collaborations and fragmentation within the city organisation which participants attributed to a lack of leadership and prioritisation of green initiatives. Capacity is also a clear issue, and the results highlight a lack of resources (including funding) but also skills in assembling evidence in support of projects, and staff time to bid for and deliver new GI proposals. When comparing these findings to others from larger cities, particularly those with a population over 1 million, the results suggest differences in prioritisation, critical mass, resources and capabilities and capacities influencing GI implementation, these are important to consider as they may prevent transferability of GI best practices from larger cities, who tend to be more active and innovative, to smaller scale cities. Co-production of knowledge, could offer considerable potential to improve GI implementation, but the design of any such schemes should recognise the issue of capacity by providing resources to allow participation of practitioners in smaller municipalities. Finally, respondents highlighted increasing environmental awareness of local communities and whilst the effect of this is yet to be seen, this was considered as having considerable potential in improving GI implementation in smaller municipalities.

Moving Beyond Disappointment: India, FDI, and Sustainability

executive summary: This essay examines what lessons can be learned for sustainable finance from India's recent history of foreign investment. main argument India has not increased its share of FDI in recent years as much as has been hoped. Risks for FDI continue to be high, especially due to growing economic nationalism and flawed dispute resolution mechanisms. The destinations for the investment India receives are strongly shaped by the risk perceptions of foreign investors—they prefer the stock market, services sector, and projects with minimal upfront investment and no political exposure. This has hindered the government's attempts to mobilize investment into the manufacturing sector and has negative implications also for sustainable finance. Most green infrastructure projects in India, or those related to sustainable development, do not fit the risk profile preferred by foreign investors. Thus, judging by India's recent history with FDI, energizing sustainable finance into India will require deeper reform. policy implications • The Indian government will have to bring its actual regulation of foreign investment closer to its welcoming rhetoric to improve the climate for FDI. • To attract greater levels of investment, attempts to favor "Indian" companies over others in various sectors must end. • Dispute resolution mechanisms must be reformed to encourage FDI—both by expanding capacity in India's judicial system and by accepting international arbitration awards. • Sectors in India crucial to sustainable and greener development, such as renewable energy and green infrastructure, will need to be ring-fenced from political risk.

Green Communication Infrastructure (GCI) Serving Different Smart City Applications

Aims: The aim of the Green Communication Infrastructure (GCI) project is to understand the idea of a self "sustainably" controlled correspondence foundation fitting for smart city application fields. Background: This paper shows the endeavors to understand the idea of a self "sustainably" energized communication foundation fitting for smart city application fields. The recommended Green Communication Infrastructure (CGI) comprises different kinds of remote settled (or even versatile) hubs performing diverse activities as per the application requests. An imperative class of these hubs is the Wireless Solar Router (WSR). Objective: The work in this venture was begun in 2009 with the aim of demonstrating the essential advances that must be taken to accomplish such framework and proclaim the value of embracing natural vitality assets in building mission basic frameworks. Alternate destinations of this venture are introducing a sensibly cost effective, solid, verified, and simple to introduce correspondence foundation. Method: The arrangement to actualize the GCI was accomplished after passing through two structural levels: device level and system level. Result: The suggested system is highly applicable and serves a wide range of smart city application fields and hence many people and organizations can utilize this system. Conclusion: The presence of a reliable, secured, low cost, easy to install and self-powered communication infrastructure is mandatory nowadays. The communities in developing countries or in rural areas need such a system in order to communicate with other people in the world which will their social and economic situations positively.

Environmental justice implications of siting criteria in urban green infrastructure planning

ABSTRACT Green infrastructure (GI) has become a panacea for cities working to enhance sustainability and resilience. While the rationale for GI primarily focuses on its multifunctionality (e.g. delivering multiple ecosystem services to local communities), uncertainties remain around how, for whom, and to what extent GI delivers these services. Additionally, many scholars increasingly recognize potential disservices of GI, including gentrification associated with new GI developments. Building on a novel dataset of 119 planning documents from 19 U.S. cities, we utilize insights from literature on justice in urban planning to examine the justice implications of criteria used in the siting of GI projects. We analyze the GI siting criteria described in city plans and how they explicitly or implicitly engage environmental justice. We find that justice is rarely explicitly discussed, yet the dominant technical siting criteria that focus on stormwater and economic considerations have justice implications. We conclude with recommendations for centering justice in GI spatial planning.

Constraints and catalysts influencing green infrastructure projects: A study of small communities in Oregon (USA)

Variability in regulatory structure and climate can impact green infrastructure projects and policies in smaller communities (<50,000). To examine how these factors can constrain or catalyze green infrastructure projects, we facilitated the development of two green infrastructure demonstration and education projects in Coos Bay and LaGrande, two small communities in the state of Oregon, USA. Concurrent with the development of these projects, we conducted interviews with local community leaders and natural resource professionals in 12 other small communities to broaden our understanding of catalysts and constraints pertaining to implementation process. This research illustrates that implementing and sustaining green infrastructure projects in small communities can have an unique set of constraints. For example, both unwieldy regulations and a lack of regulations constrain green infrastructure implementation. We found that in small communities that fell under federal regulations, stakeholders felt constrained by the regulations, particularly given the limited capacity of staff, expertise, and funding to comply with these regulations. Conversely, communities that were not under regulatory edicts we able to take a more flexible approach. Catalysts that can help drive and sustain green infrastructure projects include close relationships with staff, landowners, and the public, and a dedicated source of funding.

Reconciling humans and birds when designing ecological corridors and parks within urban landscapes.

Considering the necessity of interdisciplinary approaches for planning and managing the expansion of urban landscapes worldwide, this study aimed to (1) assess landscape permeability for birds and people inhabiting a Neotropical city and (2) propose priority streets and areas for the implementation of a green infrastructure project that could benefit both. To reach these goals, we generated resistance surfaces using expert knowledge to simulate multiple least-cost corridors (MLCC) between parks and green spaces within an urban landscape for people and seven bird species. We compared the solutions using a corridors' spatial agreement analysis, which allow us to identify the overlap between modeled corridors for all organisms or functional groups of interest. We also identified the streets most selected by the simulated MLCC and then identified a green space which is a convergence point of corridors modeled for both people and bird species. Finally, we suggested priority streets for planting trees and proposed interventions to turn the green space into a multifunctional park, conciliating social and ecological perspectives.

Urban bat occupancy is highly influenced by noise and the location of water: Considerations for nature-based urban planning

Nature-based green infrastructure projects have become a common consideration in cities for the benefits they provide to humans. However, the co-benefits provided to wildlife are often assumed but not critically assessed. The value of green infrastructure for wildlife likely depends on the habitat requirements of a species and the spatial context of that habitat within the landscape. We examined the influence of both natural characteristics and those of the built environment, including noise, on bat species distribution in the Chicago, Illinois metropolitan area. Occupancy rates for four of the eight species in our study responded positively to the proximity of water sources, and three species responded negatively to increasing urban noise. When noise and water were examined in association with one another, the benefits of being adjacent to water quickly diminished as noise levels increased. These results illustrate the importance of considering both natural elements and the built environment in urban habitat design. Our findings demonstrate that cities - when carefully planned and designed - can provide important habitat for bats, a taxa of high conservation need.

Green Infrastructure for Sanitation in Settlements in the Global South: A Narrative Review of Socio-Technical Systems

In the developing economies of the Global South, a fundamental challenge in the transition of settlements from rural or periurban to urban is increased environmental contamination as a result of poor sanitation and sanitation management. With governments’ limited ability to connect all neighbourhoods to a city’s existing municipal water, sewerage and other services, decentralised approaches using green infrastructure offer potential to address this challenge. In addition, green infrastructure might facilitate a move towards a holistic response to manage the full water cycle. This paper presents a narrative review of green infrastructure projects, involving constructed wetlands or their variants for wastewater treatment, within vulnerable communities in the Global South. It describes the scale and scope of each project, identifies the challenges of implementation, and reflects on their outcomes for different stakeholder groups. The review demonstrates that decentralised sanitation programs using constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment can provide a range of advantages/benefits/services, dependant on the specific sociocultural, political and biogeophysical contexts of each. Issues of governance and sociocultural appropriateness, rather than technical issues, challenged the implementation of green infrastructure for sanitation in these projects. Projects must be a collaboration between the government, nongovernment organisations and the community. Whether the project is organised from top-down or bottom-up, community consultation is essential. Context will determine the role of the community in the consultation process and the type of information required to guide the design, implementation and governance of the system. In every project to provide decentralised sanitation systems, the community must be participants, not simply beneficiaries.

Blue green infrastructure, from niche to mainstream: Challenges and opportunities for planning in Stockholm

The need for a transformation from conventional rainwater drainage systems towards Blue Green Infrastructure systems, designed as open spatial systems for sustainable rainwater management, is acknowledged. However, these systems are viewed as sociotechnical systems and, consequently, this transition has been slow. This paper focuses on the planning processes behind Blue Green Infrastructure projects in Stockholm and analyse them as transition experiments, addressing the question: what challenges and opportunities can be identified to enable the new systems to become a common component of rainwater management practices? Based on a literature review, this paper presents a methodological framework by identifying the key factors for facilitating or blocking sociotechnical change. These cluster around six categories –– context, actors, instruments, processes, outputs and outcomes, and impacts. The paper used the framework to collect data and analyse three urban projects. Stockholm has remarkable strengths associated with moving towards new solutions, in terms of receptive contexts, human agency, space for experimentation, and a collaborative planning culture. However, there is a need for renegotiating the positional power of the actors involved in the planning systems in order to provide opportunities for water professionals to establish a stronger role in fitting the new solutions into the overall landscape, and urban planning processes and goals.

Iterative scenarios for social-ecological systems.

Managing social-ecological systems toward desirable regimes requires learning about the system being managed while preparing for many possible futures. Adaptive management (AM) and scenario planning (SP) are two systems management approaches that separately use learning to reduce uncertainties and employ planning to manage irreducible uncertainties, respectively. However, each of these approaches have limitations that confound management of social-ecological systems. Here, we introduce iterative scenarios (IS), a systems management approach that is a hybrid of the scopes and relationships to uncertainty and controllability of AM and SP that combines the "iterativeness" of AM and futures planning of SP. Iterative scenarios is appropriate for situations with high uncertainty about whether a management action will lead to intended outcomes, the desired benefits are numerous and cross-scale, and it is difficult to account for the social implications around the natural resource management options. The value of iterative scenarios is demonstrated by applying the approach to green infrastructure futures for a neighborhood in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S., that had experienced long-term, systemic disinvestment. The Cleveland green infrastructure project was particularly well suited to the IS approach given that learning about environmental factors was necessary and achievable, but what would be socially desirable and possible was unknown. However, iterative scenarios is appropriate for many social-ecological systems where uncertainty is high as IS accommodates real-world complexity faced by management.

CRITERIA FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IN COASTAL AREAS

Unlike traditional infrastructure, which only takes into account socio-economic and political factors, or ecological restoration which focuses on the recovery of ecosystem health, resistance and resilience, green infrastructure has multifunctional goals, determined by the ecological and socioeconomic conditions of each, specific site (Silva et al., 2017). Connectivity, multifunctionality, integration and a multiscale approach are the key concepts in green infrastructure projects. Coastal green infrastructure projects include broad and contrasting aspects such as: 1. Recovery of the structure and functionality of natural ecosystems, 2. Creation of artificial ecosystems, 3. Engineering structures that depend on the functioning of the surrounding ecosystems, 4. Traditional engineering projects, adapted to reduce their environmental impact and, 5. Corrective actions applied to structures and land uses which damage the environment and threaten socio-economic aspects.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/76S-SfbIM4Y

Life in Anticipation of Wind Power Development: Three Cases from Coastal Norway

Wind power development, whilst welcomed by many as a potentially green source of energy, also gives rise to considerable local resistance. Drawing on three case studies from coastal Norway (Frøya, Haramsøy, and Egersund), the present article sets out to reflect on life in anticipation of wind power development. Reflecting on the nature of life in anticipation of undesired wind power developments, with implications for how life is lived in dread of imminent adversities in general (such as climate change, pandemics, and disaster risks), these case studies focus on how communities relate to the future and how they perceive and strive to organise so as to shape outcomes. A central point raised in this article is that wind power projects could become more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable if greater attention is paid to working with communities to reduce distrust and uncertainties before, during and after such projects. Hence, relational work carried out that may shape the affective state of anticipation prior to and during wind farm construction can be understood as crucial to the sustainability of large-scale green infrastructure projects.

Using Meta-Analysis to Assess Benefits of Green Infrastructure Investments: Application to Small Urban Projects in Hinesville, GA

Small scale urban green infrastructure projects can provide local ecological services that should be accounted for in project assessment. Benefits assessment can be expensive and time consuming; benefit transfer provides an economical alternative, but the quality of the analysis depends upon available data. The best-case scenario for benefit transfer is to utilize a meta-analysis. In this paper, we use the meta-analysis of Bockarjova, et al. (2020) to predict ecological benefits of small scale urban green infrastructure investments in Hinesville, GA. In doing so, we implement a censoring procedure on the benefit transfer function to permit analysis of small-scale (less than one-hectare) projects. We find evidence of substantial net economic benefits, with estimates ranging from $657,000 to over $5million.