Green Roof Technology as a Sustainable Strategy to Improve Water Urban Availability

Scarano

Buccolieri

et al. 2021

Land

Self Cite

146

In the context of urban land-use growth and the consequent impacts on the environment, green spaces provide ecosystem services for human health. The ecosystem services concept synthesises human–environmental interactions through a series of combined components of biodiversity and abiotic elements, linking ecological processes and functions. The concept of green infrastructure (GI) in the urban context emphasises the quality and quantity of urban and peri-urban green spaces and natural areas. In dense urban contexts, the applications of GI are limited and not applied to the potential urban spaces such as roofs and gardens. Often, roofs are characterised by impermeable paved surfaces with negative effects on human well-being, whereas garden designs do not consider social needs and environmental interactions. The role of urban stressors or the urban context as a driving force or pressure of urban green space is not always well understood and employed in the planning of green spaces. This is partly due to a knowledge gap between different science disciplines that operate on different scales, from single processes of the plants (which focus on plant responses to environmental stresses affecting human well-being) to urban ecosystems (which focus on the biodiversity and urban space planning–human well-being relationship). This can create a paradox, as green spaces that are not adequately designed might not produce the expected effects. In this paper, an overview of benefits and limitations of applying the ecosystem services approach when designing green spaces is presented. The focus is on the main urban ecosystem services provided by green roofs and community gardens such as GI that can represent strategies to provide ecological and social multifunctionality to waterproofed surfaces connected to the buildings and low-exploited gardens being the main areas that affect dense urban settlements, and thus, increasing the ecosystem services in the urban environment, such as reducing the Urban Heat Island, as well as flooding events. Specifically, the paper highlights (i) feedback between ecological processes and functions that support ecosystem services, (ii) urban environmental stresses in relation to disservices that these can create for human well-being and (iii) key issues that should be considered in the planning and design of urban ecosystem services. Such a new vision of urban ecosystem services highlights the need to look at GI as an active part of the urban space design in the built environment.

Section: Ecosystem Services Provided By Urban Green Spacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Planning of Urban Green Spaces: An Ecological Perspective on Human Benefits

Scarano

Buccolieri

et al. 2021

Land

Self Cite

146

“…In this case, it helps to plan the multifunctional use of space. Therefore, green roofs can increase the quality of the buildings by reducing their impact on the urban landscape while also replacing some functions of natural areas and, therefore, assuming an important role in mental health [61] (Figure 13c). However, the realization of a new building would require more discussion among decision-makers.…”

Section: Top-down Activities: Reflective Analysis Using Bottom-up Infmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bottom-Up and Top-Down Participatory Approach to Planning and Designing Local Urban Development: Evidence from an Urban University Center

Zaccarelli

Lara

et al. 2020

Land

Self Cite

The urban area is characterized by different urban ecosystems that interact with different institutional levels, including different stakeholders and decision-makers, such as public administrations and governments. This can create many institutional conflicts in planning and designing the urban space. It would arguably be ideal for an urban area to be planned like a socio-ecological system where the urban ecosystem and institutional levels interact with each other in a multi-scale analysis. This work embraces a planning process that aims at being applied to a multi-institutional level approach that is able to match different visions and stakeholders' needs, combining bottom-up and top-down participation approaches. At the urban scale, the use of this approach is sometimes criticized because it appears to increase conflicts between the different stakeholders. Starting from a case study in the Municipality of Lecce, South Italy, we apply a top-down and bottom-up participation approach to overcome conflicts at the institutional levels in the use of the urban space in the Plan of the Urban University Center. The bottom-up participation action analyzes the vision of people that frequent the urban context. After that, we share this vision in direct comparison with decision-makers to develop the planning and design solutions. The final result is a draft of the hypothetical Plan of the Urban University Center. In this way, the bottom-up and top-down approaches are useful to match the need of the community that uses the area with the vision of urban space development of decision-makers, reducing the conflicts that can arise between different institutional levels. In this study, it also emerges that the urban question is not green areas vs. new buildings, but it is important to focus on the social use of the space to develop human well-being. With the right transition of information and knowledge between different institutional levels, the bottom-up and top-down approaches help develop an operative effective transdisciplinary urban plan and design. Therefore, public participation with bottom-up and top-down approaches is not a tool to obtain maximum consensus, but mainly a moment of confrontation to better address social issues in urban planning and design.

“…The SEA process can introduce mitigation actions to reduce negative environmental impacts and to simultaneously improve the quality of human life. In an urban context, mitigation actions should be identified to develop urban elements harmonizing economic income with social-ecological needs and without compromising the ecological functions and ecosystem services' provision [17,29]. By linking scientific knowledge and planned activities, practical solutions were identified that can meet ecological needs with economic and social needs.…”

Section: Stepmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integration of Ecosystem Services in Strategic Environmental Assessment of a Peri-Urban Development Plan

Radicchio

Medagli³

et al. 2020

Sustainability

Self Cite

Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) can support decision-makers in constructing more sustainable plans, programs, and policies (PPPs). To be more coherent with new frontiers of sustainable cities, PPPs need to include conservation objectives and to increase ecosystem service (ES) strategies. The ES concept is not intrinsic to the SEA process; therefore, it is necessary to develop an approach and methodology to include it. In this paper, we propose a methodology to integrate the concept of ecosystem services in all phases of the SEA process for a sub-urban plan, including the design of mitigation measures. The case study is represented by a peri-urban development plan in the municipality of Gallipoli in South Italy, characterized by a strong tourism economy and valuable agro-ecosystems. The analysis shows the priority ecosystem services that are selected considering the sustainable development and environmental goals, the context of referment, and the aims of the peri-urban plan. After, we highlight the potential ecosystem services developed considering the design of mitigation actions like green infrastructure, which could be implemented in the peri-urban plan. The capacity to develop green infrastructure in SEA processes can configure the SEA as a tool for ecological urban design that is integrated with urban planning. This requires the ability to transfer ecological and planning theories into practical actions and the capacity of different disciplines to work in a transdisciplinary approach.