Abstract:In the quest for more sustainable urban landscape development, the concept of "green infrastructure" (GI) has become central in policy documents and as a multifunctional general planning tool. GI is not, however, a simple and unambiguous solution. While in policy documents there are claims for more and connected GI, actual urban development takes another direction. The densifying imperative is hard to combine with an increased and more connected GI. This paper argues for a critical and diversified approach to the concept of GI, in order to facilitate its implementation in urban planning and management. Any kind of GI will not deliver all ecosystems services in any place, not without land use conflicts, investments and long term operating costs. This calls for a GI concept linked to actors and mediating conflicting values. Linguistic as well as spatial definitions of the two relevant dichotomies of "green-grey" and "public-private" are crucial in GI location, design, construction and management, it is argued. Overarching representations of GI will be needed, but not only pictured as a separate system, but also displayed with necessary integration to the whole urban landscape. Development over time will need an intersectorial implementation and management program. Some of the GI intentions may be implemented in planning processes, some through re-organization and redesign of public space, and some by agreements with landowners. To reach out to implementation in ordinary urban development, GI needs to be described in a way that establishes points of connection to a variety of relevant actors and organizations taking part in implementation of GI.

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Two groups of schoolyards for junior- and intermediate-level schools were studied. A previous study had shown that teachers considered these groups of schoolyards to be "good" and bad, respectively. It was found that the good schoolyards had woods either in or near them, whereas the bad schoolyards did not. It also was seen that children in the good schoolyards took-part In a greater number of activities than children in the bad ones. The schoolyards' different places were used with different frequency and for different activities in the two groups. The results indicate that when the place is included in the activity concept, it is possible to point out general differences, regarding place as well as activity, between schoolyards that were perceived as good or bad.

In spite of the frequent use of landscape representations in planning, 'the urban landscape' is rarely the focus in discussions within planning practice or planning theory, be it in terms of representations or as a socio-material framework for planning actions. Instead it appears to be taken for granted and in this way affects planning theory and practice, leaving planning activities (professional as well as participatory) as rather haphazard events, hard to contextualize and to foresee any consequences of. Taking the landscape for granted excludes the possibility of discussing the differences between understanding the changing urban landscape from representations and understanding it in relation to experienced realities. This text argues for increased interdisciplinary elaborations on the meaning and content of urban landscape, by linking it to discourses in planning theory, urban theory and landscape theory.

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