Green Infrastructure

Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies

by Sadahisa Kato

Peer-reviewed paper
Kato, S. 2011. Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies. Journal of the 2011 International Symposium on City Planning: 161-170. Korea Planners Association.

Reviewed the concept of green infrastructure (GI) and five cases of GI-like application in Japan; proposed four... more Reviewed the concept of green infrastructure (GI) and five cases of GI-like application in Japan; proposed four general landscape planning and design guidelines of GI from a landscape ecology perspective; and made recommendations of four areas of application of GI to Asian cities

The Economics of Open Space

by Elizabeth Brabec

Brief on the Bicycle-Pedestrian Pathway Dedication by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, the League of American Bicyclists, the Bicycle Federation of Oregon, National …

by Elizabeth Brabec

Protecting local green spaces

by Ian Mell

Published in Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association. Vol. 81., No. 4. 194-197.

Ian Mell considers the implications and possible outcomes of
the new ‘Local Green Space’ designation. Ian Mell considers the implications and possible outcomes of
the new ‘Local Green Space’ designation.

Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? Exploring the challenges and solutions of urban green development.

by Ian Mell

Proceedings of the Congress on Urban Green Spaces 2012 (CUGS 2012), New Delhi, India, 5th-7th March 2012.

Developing sustainable and liveable environments is a key goal in the planning and delivery of urban expansions.... more Developing sustainable and liveable environments is a key goal in the planning and delivery of urban expansions. Historically in Europe urban greening was deemed a central element in promoting green and functional urban cities. Unfortunately as migration to cities has increased infrastructure needs and economic diversification has occurred simultaneously, all of which have placed constraints on the availability and value of urban green infrastructure.

One of the main challenges to greening urban environments is establishing the value of greening to developers, the public and city administrators. Despite the diverse form and function that urban greening can take investments in green infrastructure have been lower than for housing, transport infrastructure and commercial development. A number of factors have influenced this process including the availability of land for development, the economic value of space, the needs of government to meet the housing and employment needs of its residents and the undervaluation of urban green spaces.

By exploring the range of delivery options available to planners it is possible to demonstrate how cost effective investments in green infrastructure can be in urban environments. Research has shown that green investments can work at a number of scales and can react effectively to changes in urban form. As the capacity of urban environments to meet the needs of its population is pushed further towards its critical point green infrastructure offers solutions to aid the responses to climate change, public health and promoting a closer relationship between people and the landscapes they live in.

Key words: Green infrastructure, urban planning, climate change, social value, ecological integrity, economic valuation

The role of economic, social and ecological evaluation in promoting Green Infrastructure investments in urban environments.

by Ian Mell

Proceedings of the Congress on Urban Green Spaces 2012 (CUGS 2012), New Delhi, India, 5th-7th March 2012.

Abstract

Urban environments are in a constant state of change. They are constrained by a number of... more Abstract

Urban environments are in a constant state of change. They are constrained by a number of competing constraints that can limit the development and management of green infrastructure resources. One of central issues in this process is the attribution of economic values to landscape resources that have historically been underfunded and undervalued.

Over the past decade a green infrastructure approach to planning has afforded planners and developers a range of evidence enabling them to assess the value of green and public open spaces to the ecological, economic and social viability of urban areas.

Green infrastructure provides a framework for planners enabling an integrated approach to investment to be undertaken. Bringing together social, ecological and economic evaluations within one development process has provided scope for more discreet investments in landscape resources to be made within the urban realm. In an era where urban expansion, reactions to climate change and meetings the social needs of cities is becoming increasingly pertinent, as our ability to facilitate multi-functional urban environments is crucial in promoting liveability and sustainability. 

By examining the role valuation plays in promoting liveable places it is possible to debate whether it is possible to balance economic viability with the maintenance of ecological integrity and promotion of social needs. Using evidence from a range of case studies key influences and decision-making tasks will be discussed highlighting how the nature of development, its focus and its role in facilitating economic valuations of the urban environment can be made.

Key words: Green infrastructure, public perceptions, economic value, planning practices, integrated

Carse A (2012) Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal Watershed.” Social Studies of Science 32(4).

by Ashley Carse

In: Special Issue on Water and Science and Technology Studies, Samer Alatout & Jessica Barnes, eds. Comments by Karen Bakker & Wiebe Bijker.

The Panama Canal requires an enormous volume of fresh water to function. A staggering 52 million gallons are released... more The Panama Canal requires an enormous volume of fresh water to function. A staggering 52 million gallons are released into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with each of the 35–45 ships that transit the canal daily. The water that facilitates interoceanic transportation and global connection falls as rain across the watershed surrounding the canal and is managed by an extensive system of locks, dams, and hydrographic stations. These technologies – which correspond with the popular understanding of infrastructure as hardware – were largely constructed during the early 20th century. Since the late 1970s, however, administrators and other concerned actors have responded to actual and potential water scarcity within the canal system by developing a managerial approach that integrates engineered technologies and new techniques of land-use planning and environmental regulation across the watershed. Through this process, techno-politics and environmental politics have become increasingly inextricable in the transit zone. Whereas canal administrators previously emphasized the control of water in its liquid state, watershed management emerged as an attempt to manipulate water flows through the legal protection of forests and restriction of agriculture. As forested landscapes have been assigned new infrastructural functions (water storage and regulation), campesino farmers have been charged with a new responsibility (forest conservation) often at odds with their established agricultural practices. Consequently, I bring together scholarship on infrastructure in science and technology studies and political ecology in anthropology and geography to examine why, how, and to what effect landscapes around the canal have been transformed from agricultural frontier to managed watershed. I suggest that the concept of infrastructure is a useful theoretical tool and empirical topic for analyzing the politics of environmental service provision. By paying attention to the contingent history of engineering decisions and the politics embedded in the changing socio-technical system that delivers water to the canal, we can better understand the distributional politics of environmental service provision in Panama today.

Le infrastrutture in Italia: dotazione, programmazione, realizzazione

by marcucci edoardo

Interwoven landscape

by Alessio Erioli

Co-authored with Mirco Bianchini; additional collaboration from Piero Bruschi and Andrea Baschieri for the chemical developments.

Published in "2011 International Conference on Green Buildings and Sustainable Cities" - Procedia Engineering

Human specie has always engineered the environment to set the conditions for its own settlement, producing in its... more Human specie has always engineered the environment to set the conditions for its own settlement, producing in its evolutionary development superorganisms (cities) and the necessary networks of connections among them. Instead of rejecting cars as an extraneous object to a picturesque nature, this project starts from a perspective in which cities and technology are the metabolic extension of human specie and therefore a necessary part of its own nature; the vessels (vehicles) for human transportation, or better, the vehicle-host symbiotic system thus becomes a necessary part of human ecology, and so the network of connections upon which they live, operate and interact with: infrastructures. The project of an environmental enhancer for the Nogara mare highway in Veneto (Italy) provides the unique chance to bring together ecological thinking, host interaction and active materials. Its location (an open country planar area among cultivated fields) enucleates as critical variables the impact of pollutants and the phenomenon of dazzling. With respect to such criticalities, the project uses digital generative and parametric strategies to generate a performative structure in which densification and rarefaction of elements is a local morphological response to dazzle. The structure itself acts as a scaffold for a photo catalytic PET based material that, mimicking the behavior of coccoluti (marine microorganisms) is able to reduce CO2 (and potentially other pollutants) to salts and nitrates that are then naturally deployed to the neighboring cultivated fields as fertilizers. The material has been tested for photo catalytic integration and is currently under development. Present building and production techniques privilege the industrial assembly of inert materials, with a one-way flow of energy and process from raw material to finished product. Instead of this mono-directional energy consumption the project promotes the continuous exchange of information (as code and matter-energy) at all levels and from the digital to the material domains: use of dazzle information, morphogenetic rules and structural behavior to generate the scaffold, a photo catalytic material that responds to pollutants and produces fertilizers, making the structure symbiotic with their hosts and the environment.

(2011) American State Litter Scorecard: New Rankings for An Increasingly Environmentally Concerned Population

by Steve Spacek

Cited by THE BOSTON GLOBE and numerous Newspapers; TRAVEL+LEISURE; "Reducing Litter on Roadsides" Academic Journal of (U.S) National Transportations Academies.

By popular demand--a NEW, up-to-date State Litter "Scorecard" is now released for the 2011 ASPA Baltimore... more By popular demand--a NEW, up-to-date State Litter "Scorecard" is now released for the 2011 ASPA Baltimore Conference--measuring each state’s overall environmental quality through public property/spaces debris removal efforts. The “Scorecard” uses tried-and-true, hard-to-publicly obtain objective and subjective measures, leading to a total overall score for each measured jurisdiction. Readers can thus gain a realistic "picture" of "what's going on" within one or all of the 50 states. Littering/dumping remains harmful, serious American environmental crimes, creating dangers to public health and safety, and contributing to the deaths of over 800 Americans in debris-attributed motor vehicle accidents. The Scorecard has been a valuable tool in enabling improved debris/litter abatement practices in states and regions.

Washington was deemed the overall top BEST state, followed by California, Iowa, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Oregon, New Hampshire, North Carolina and New York. Kentucky led the bottom –the ultimate WORST and poorest performer of the 50 United States, followed by Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota and Texas.

Regretfully, some states still do not collect important comparative litter data measures, nor yet to have made REAL differences in improving environmental conditions to protect citizenry health and welfare. This paper is yet another call to action to help remedy these unattended-to issues—and, to save lives.

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE - INNOVATIVE LANDSCAPE PLANNING FOR MULTI-FUNCTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS?

by Ian Mell

Co-authored with Maggie Roe, Department of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle.

Green Infrastructure - innovative landscape planning for multi-functional environments?

The role of green... more Green Infrastructure - innovative landscape planning for multi-functional environments?

The role of green infrastructure planning as a mechanism for positive landscape development is being widely debated in the UK as a result of recent interest in the concept shown by government agencies and planning authorities. As a landscape planning process that encompasses the ideas and ideals of social and ecological connectivity and multi-functionality, green infrastructures are seen to hold the potential to provide a panoply of ecological, economic and social benefits. 
 
The purpose of this paper it to outline the recent development of the green infrastructure concept in the UK and to provide an insight onto the underlying influences acting upon this
development. Through an examination of the debates relating to landscape connectivity and the development of functional landscapes this paper will describe how the principles of
environmental conservation, Greenways, landscape planning and Landscape Ecology have provided the basis for green infrastructure development. 

The paper discusses the role of green infrastructure as a part of the broader urban and urban-fringe renewal in the UK and the move towards planning policies that aim to achieve
multi-functional green spaces.  This becomes increasingly important when considering a variety of landscape scales with a focus on sustainability issues.  Analysis of the results of
a number of research projects undertaken by Newcastle University and the North East Community Forests (NECF) partnership will be presented to provide an indication of the
current theoretical and practitioner context for green infrastructure planning.  Finally, the paper speculates on the future development and potential of green infrastructure planning in the UK.


Keywords: green infrastructure, multi-functionality, connectivity, decision-making, landscape scale planning

Planting Parishes in East Cambridgeshire, UK

by Ian Mell

Exploring the role of green infrastructure in the mitigation of climate change in the urban realm

by Ian Mell

Will CIL help to fund green infrastructure?

by Ian Mell

Published in the Journal of the Town & Country Planning Association (2012).

Ian Mell considers whether the National Planning Policy
Framework and the Community Infrastructure Levy will... more Ian Mell considers whether the National Planning Policy
Framework and the Community Infrastructure Levy will help or
hinder investment in green infrastructure and landscape planning.

Green Infrstructure: concepts and planning

by Ian Mell

Green Infrastructure planning: A contemporary approach for innovative interventions in urban landscape management

by Ian Mell

Green Infrastructure has become established as the central approach to landscape planning in the UK, Europe and North... more Green Infrastructure has become established as the central approach to landscape planning in the UK, Europe and North America over the past decade. Bringing together a number of disciplines to form a coherent landscape resource based approach to environmental management. By assessing its utility and value this paper addresses the development of this approach in policy, practice and examines its successes and failures. Reviewing alternative approaches that Green Infrastructure interventions take to meet the challenges of population growth, transport and recreational needs and supporting economic growth is therefore an important assessment. This is discussed in terms of the direction that current and future Green Infrastructure planning policy is being presented in. Despite the extensive use of its principles in landscape planning in the UK, Europe and North America additional data is required if it is to be embedded fully in policy at the appropriate scale.

Evaluating the demands of green infrastructure development: People, the landscape and the economy.

by Ian Mell

Co-authored with Maggie Roe, Department of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle.

Payne, S. & Barker, A. (in prep) 'Exploring the role of UK speculative housebuilders in green infrastructure delivery’

by Sarah Payne

The changing focus of England’s Community Forest programme and its use of a green infrastructure approach to multi-functional landscape planning

by Ian Mell

Published in the International Journal of Sustainable Society

The role of England’s Community Forest programme has constantly diversified since its creation in 1990. Over the last... more The role of England’s Community Forest programme has constantly diversified since its creation in 1990. Over the last decade, its role has extended from urban foresters to providers of multi-functional and connected spaces around post-industrial cities. The development of such a key role has allowed each community forest to influence the contemporary debates relating to green infrastructure. However, whether green infrastructure has had a beneficial impact on the long-term sustainability of community forestry in England is still open to question. This paper draws on research conducted with four of England’s Community Forests between 2005 and 2008. It assesses the development of community forestry and explores the dynamic role green infrastructure has played in this process. Through an examination of community forestry practice, this paper asks how green infrastructure has facilitated landscape scale development within a transient period of landscape policy change. Data from interviews and policy analysis undertaken with the North-East Community Forest (NECF) partnership, the Mersey Forest and Marston Vale Community Forest inform this argument assessing the value of green infrastructure in multi-functional forestry. This paper concludes that green infrastructure potentially holds both positive and negative outcomes for community forests. It argues that an over-reliance on green infrastructure in work programmes and funding applications may have led to a narrowing of community forest activities. It goes on to conclude that the broader objectives of England’s Community Forests may offer a more sustainable approach for landscape planning that incorporates green infrastructure as an element of community forestry development.

Damian White A Green Industrial Revolution Sustainable Technological Innovation in a Global Age

by Damian White

Sympathetic critique of Natural Capitalism and Factor Four literatures......some initial attempts to formulate questions that a critical sociology of design should be asking......