An Evaluation of Local Comprehensive Plans Toward Sustainable Green Infrastructure in US

Abstract

The benefits of green infrastructure have been verified at the site-level by many empirical studies. However, there is limited understanding of how local governments prepare and implement green infrastructure planning in practice. This study employs the content analysis method to examine the quality of local comprehensive plans regarding sustainable green infrastructure in 60 municipalities of the United States. The study uses regression analysis to explain the variance of plan quality. Study results indicate that key green infrastructure principles were not fully incorporated in the existing sampled plans, with average score of 19.6 out of 50. While plan quality scores were slightly higher in counties than in cities, both areas could significantly improve plan quality with detailed policies, action strategies, and implementation tactics for green infrastructure planning and management. Regression analysis further identified that planning capacities, as well as socio-economic characteristics of study area may impact overall plan quality. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of incorporating detailed green infrastructure principles whenever local planners adopt or amend regional plans in order to improve plan quality and to support implementation. Sustainability 2018, 10, 4143 2 of 21 together" (p. 97). Sharing similar views about the role of corridors, Benedict and McMahon [6] added examples of hubs such as natural areas of vegetation, open space, or an unknown ecological value.With the rapid expansion of urbanized areas, leading to increased landscape fragmentation, hubs and corridors have an enhanced role in city or urban areas due to their support to ecosystem services related to landscape connectivity even if rarely evaluated in green infrastructure planning [7,8]. In the city, where natural landscapes have been replaced by man-made structures, hubs and corridors are now more important than ever [5]. To support efforts to restore natural environments to city and urban areas, one of the region's primary tools is implementing effective green infrastructure planning. Green infrastructure often refers to a "strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas that is designed to provide a wide range of ecosystem services" [6,9]. Although the concept can be implied differently at the national (green network), regional (planning), or site (low impact development practices) level, the share goal is to design, construct, and manage nature by harmonizing environmental resources with city landscape [10]. In the US, green infrastructure is more focused on various approaches to manage and restore natural water resources at the various level [11]. As one of natural based solutions to move cities toward sustainability, green infrastructure can help improve the urban stormwater management by enhancing the recreation and tourism opportunities as well as aesthetic externalities [12]. More importantly, green infrastructure also plays a crucial role in saving energy, reducing urban heat island effect...

Evaluation of Local Comprehensive Plans to Vacancy Issue in a Growing and Shrinking City

“…Third, a local comprehensive plan has been employed from various prior studies as an effective measure to assess a community's long-range visions and preparedness for future developments. Starting from early 1990s, many previous studies assessed diverse topics, including natural hazards [32][33][34][35], affordable housing [36], green infrastructure [37], land use pattern [38], new urbanism [39], sustainable development [21,40], smart growth [41], and urban sprawl [42]. These studies, however, have mostly adopted the content analysis method that was generally relying on Kasier et al's plan evaluation approach [43].…”

Implementation of Nature-Based Solutions for Hydro-Meteorological Risk Reduction in Small Mediterranean Catchments: The Case of Portofino Natural Regional Park, Italy

“…(3) decrease of the impacts by landslides and slope instability at the coastal sediment amount level [68]; (4) decrease of the risk of injuries among the park visitors due to slope instability of interesting hiking paths during heavy rainfalls; (5) support for the interaction between private landowners; (6) integration of the proposed NBS with regional policies for land management/planning and with the Basin Master Plan [69,70]; (7) improvement of the visibility and governance model of the Portofino Natural Regional Park, also in the perspective of becoming a National Park; and (8) improvement of the collaboration between the park authority and the stakeholders.…”

Enhancing Sustainable Urban Regeneration through Smart Technologies: An Assessment of Local Urban Regeneration Strategic Plans in Korea

“…The strengths and weaknesses of plan documents can be assessed and identified; thus, adaptive planning processes and implementations can occur through high quality plans [20,21]. Plan quality evaluations have been actively adopted in multiple domains of research since the mid-1990s, covering general comprehensive planning/land-use, climate change, hazard mitigation, stormwater management, green infrastructure, affordable housing, and low impact development [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. However, to date, limited studies to our knowledge have evaluated plans pertaining to sustainable smart urban regeneration joined with smart technologies by using the step-wise plan quality assessment method.…”

“…Prior plan evaluation studies examining the topics of sustainability, urban regeneration, and smart cities were reviewed in order to determine the evaluation indicators for this study. In particular, these indicators were associated with five plan components (factual bases, goals and objectives, policies and strategies, coordination, and implementation), which have been often employed in previous evaluation research [22,25,26,36,37].…”

“…Policies (or action strategies) are established on the basis of factual bases, and they generally provide specific guidelines to realize certain goals and objectives in a plan [26,44]. In exploring the importance of policy evaluation indicators for different types of urban regeneration projects, Jin et al [45] highlight economic policy-related items, such as fostering growth of jobs and enhancing the social economy, as well as suggesting measures to prevent gentrification, a subject that is crucial for aging city center revitalization, since they can influence the results of a project.…”