Scalable Green Infrastructure—The Case of Domestic Private Gardens in Vuores, Finland

Abstract

The planning, implementation, and everyday use of the built environment interweave the green and grey components of urban fabric tightly together. Runoff from grey and impermeable surfaces causes stormwater that is managed in permeable surfaces that simultaneously act as habitats for vegetation. Green infrastructure (GI) is one of the concepts that is used to perceive, manage, and guide the components of urban green spaces. Furthermore, GI pays special attention to stormwater management and urban vegetation at several scales at the same time. This study concentrated on scalable GI in domestic private gardens. A set of garden designs in Vuores, Finland were analyzed and developed by Research by Design. The aim was to study how garden scale choices and designs can enhance GI at the block and neighbourhood scales to rethink design practices to better integrate water and vegetation throughout the scales. As a result, we propose a checklist for designers and urban planners that ensures vegetation-integrated stormwater management to enhance habitat diversity in block scale and possibility to use blocks of private plots for ecological networks. The prerequisite for garden designers is to be capable to balance between water, vegetation, and soil, and their processes and flows in detail the scale.

Stakeholder Engagement in the Generation of Urban Ecosystem Services: The Case of the Vuores Stormwater System

“…Regarding the regulation of ecosystem services, the site allows businesses to promote the preservation of endangered species and use ecological functions in stormwater management. Moreover, the site enables the residents to follow the recent developments of stormwater management and take care of stormwaters on their own property, which is already taking place in Vuores (Tahvonen, 2018). The site also helps the public sector to take care of the environment and enhance nature, ecology and biodiversity.…”

Urban Planning Insights from Tree Inventories and Their Regulating Ecosystem Services Assessment

“…There is not much literature on the ranking of the best-performing trees for avoided runoff in urban areas, so new studies should be carried out from this perspective. Indeed, many studies report overall evaluations for the urban forest [7,19] and are not differentiated by species. Trees with the best performance in pollution removal are Cedrus spp., Celtis australis L., and Larix decidua Mill, which remove more than 0.3 × 10 −4 metric tons of pollutants from the air yearly per tree.…”

“…Finally, the tool helps in tree species selection, but the overall design of the green area influences its performance. In this regard, Tahvonen [19] described how to integrate water and vegetation better to enhance stormwater management, scaling up from pilot-scale garden designs to habitats at the block scale.…”

“…Furthermore, local administrators struggle to define practical rules or suggestions starting from the results regarding local vegetation assessment and the quantification of the service it provides [16]. In this regard, some scholars have developed tools dedicated to enhancing particular ecosystem services, such as urban heat mitigation [8,17,18], stormwater management [19], and carbon stock [20]. Nevertheless, there is a lack of accessible tools to combine different ecosystem services and support decisions for urban green design, offering variable results varying the demanded services.…”

Management of Urban Waters with Nature-Based Solutions in Circular Cities—Exemplified through Seven Urban Circularity Challenges

“…NBS has changed the approach of dealing with urban water [41]. The concept of circularity dictates focussing not only on waste valorisation (i.e., through treated wastewater reuse), but also on the treatment process itself, by using eco-designs such as the various NBS systems [29].…”