City Planning and Green Infrastructure: Embedding Ecology into Urban Decision-Making

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) includes an array of products, technologies, and practices that use natural systems—or designed systems that mimic natural processes—to enhance environmental sustainability and human quality of life. GI is the ultimate source of the ecosystem services which the biotic environment provides to humanity. The maintenance and enhancement of GI to optimise the supply of ecosystem services thus requires conscious planning. The objective of this thematic issue is to publish a cross-section of quality research which addresses how urban planning can contribute to the conservation, management, enhancement, and creation of GI in the city. The terms of reference include the technical, economic, social, and political dimensions of the planning/GI nexus. Here we offer a brief overview of the articles published in this collection, and consider where policy, planning, and design relating to urban GI may be heading in the future.

Sustainable urban regeneration of brownfield sites

“…This makes it possible to approach the problem of structural and planning transformation of urbanized territories as a multi-level process, in which the regeneration of a separate site should lead to a change in the nature of the city as a whole. In this case, the processes are not considered in isolation (regardless of the scale of the changes and the territory), but in an integrated way with the aim of becoming «drivers» for further development [30,31]. Today, the city becomes a kind of mosaic of projects and transformation processes initiated by private investors, the state or their partnership.…”