Landscape and Urban Planning最新文献

Public parks are critical urban infrastructures offering health, environmental, social, and cultural benefits to people. However, the idea of park quality has lacked a clear operational definition and normative standard for measurement. We provide critical insights into existing park quality instruments and advocate for an alternative approach. First, due to the significant diversity in parks, inherent ambiguity and subjectivity in the idea of quality, and previous instruments’ inconsistent operationalizations of park quality, we recommend that future research shift its focus from creating instruments for universal application and standardized measurement to developing an inventory or list of park quality indicators that researchers and practitioners can selectively choose for their unique park contexts. Second, through our multidisciplinary examination, we identify five limitations in existing park quality instruments: (1) lack of attention to the histories of marginalized communities, (2) overemphasis on physical activities and public health, (3) lack of attention to ecological function and biodiversity, (4) lack of subjective measurements, and (5) insufficient consideration of multiple parks or a park system. Overall, a more flexible and site-specific approach to park quality measurement and the adoption of new indicators of park quality are expected to accomplish a more comprehensive and fairer assessment of park quality, contributing to park equity research and practice.

The benefits of urban green spaces (UGSs) for human health have been extensively documented. Nevertheless, few studies have incorporated multidimensional UGS exposure indicators, and little is known about the effectiveness of different metrics that should be prioritized as nature-based solutions for improving mental well-being. This study aimed to investigate the associations between various UGS exposure metrics and residents’ expressed happiness (EH) as well as to determine the prioritization of metrics in Nanjing, China, a megacity with 9.5 million inhabitants. The study region was divided into 500 m × 500 m grids, and 330,000 geotagged posts from social media (Sina Weibo) were retrieved for sentiment analysis using the Natural Language Processing (NLP). We developed a systematic UGS exposure framework using satellite, land-cover, and street view-derived data, encompassing 17 indicators of composition and configuration at overhead level as well as street green space visibility and perceived quality at eye level. A regression model and Likelihood Ratio Test were used to examine the associations between various UGS indicators and EH and determine the prioritization of indicators. The results indicated that UGS size had the greatest potential for promoting residents’ EH, followed by overall greenness in the surrounding area, aggregated UGS, perceived quality, and visibility of street green spaces. This study also found that overhead-level metrics may be more effective than eye-level metrics in enhancing residents’ EH, although both perspectives showed significant associations with EH. These findings provide valuable insights into health-oriented landscapes and urban planning to promote the development of a “happy city,” particularly in low-green resource settings in low- and middle-income countries.

Land use planning directly governs the location, size, and shape of urban parks, which can act as habitat refuges for wildlife. Thus, land use planning decisions made decades, or even centuries, ago likely affects modern day habitat availability for wildlife in cities. We sought to understand the role of these historical decisions on avian diversity between 1900 and 2020 to inform future biophilic urban planning efforts. We digitized historical maps of three mid-sized temperate U.S cities — Washington (DC), Minneapolis (MN) and Pittsburg (PA) — in five-year increments between 1900 and 2020, and calculated landscape metrics of each city’s park system over time. Historical Christmas Bird Count data in each city were used to estimate species and functional diversity metrics over the same 120-year period as a function of historical landscape metrics. Our results lend further support to the species-area relationship, as total greenspace area had the greatest positive relationship with species richness, functional divergence, and observations of species in different functional groups. Greenspace shape and connectivity also influenced some biodiversity metrics, but to a lesser degree than greenspace area. These findings demonstrate that historical land use decisions have a strong influence on the modern-day patterns of avian diversity in urban areas, which may help explain apparent differences in species assemblages across otherwise similar cities. As such, we suggest cities prioritize the establishment and protection of greenspaces to ensure lasting conservation of species across urban landscapes.

As urbanization pressures continue to intensify globally, the implementation of green infrastructure (GI) has emerged as a critical intervention for enhancing the resilience of our communities. However, literature exploring the integration of GI planning and design within the complex mechanisms of urban systems is limited. This study posits that the sensible deployment of GI should consider place-based supply along with locational demand. This research proposes a novel and integrated approach to GI planning that responds to evolving urban contexts and encompasses the operational mechanisms of services at multiple scales. We first assess the spatial mismatch between GI service supply and demand using standard spatial analytical approaches. We then project scenario-based futures to highlight future mismatch or exacerbated mismatch issues. Our results find that GI services are a significant growth driver that impacts development patterns, and the results also reveal a potential spatial shift in the service mismatches in the future. Our approach involves a dynamic spatial simulation of urban growth and the quantification of GI services over space and time. The ultimate goal is to provide reliable place-based information on optimal GI locations for planning and design purposes. We hope that this study will make a meaningful contribution to the broader discourse surrounding the resilience of urban places and the role of GI.

Global warming and urbanization have exacerbated urban heat island issues in cities, affecting the liveability and long-term health and well-being of its citizens. This study explores how landscape composition and configuration regulate diurnal air temperature variations and the cooling potential of urban green spaces.

Using a spatially-dense citizen science weather station network in Leuven (Belgium), mean night temperature, mean day temperature, and diurnal temperature range were recorded during summer heat periods of 2022. Urban land cover data were collected at two buffer scales (50m and 250m) and analysed using composition (relative cover) and configuration metrics (aggregation and shape indices). Multiple linear (mixed) models were used to investigate associations between the composition and configuration of various land covers and air temperature at different temporal and spatial scales.

Results reveal dynamic effects of urban landscape on air temperature. A 10% increase in tree cover mitigated daytime warming by 0.11 °C, likely through shading and evapotranspiration. Aggregated trees further improved daytime cooling by 0.42 °C. A 10% increase in grasses and shrubs offered significant night-time cooling up to 0.47 °C, probably due to high albedo and ventilation potential. Additionally, increasing the aggregation of grasses and shrubs by 10% enhanced nocturnal cooling by 1.62 °C, while increasing the shape complexity of trees promotes night-time cooling by 0.44 °C.

This study further highlights the need for context-specific strategies. Conserving green locations as urban forests, while designing enclosed grey locations as urban savannas, characterized by interconnected grasses and shrubs interspersed with standalone trees, could mitigate urban heat stress and enhance urban resilience.

Lockdown measures implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a rise in people’s visits to forests and urban green spaces. However, as vaccination efforts progressed and infection rates declined, it remained uncertain whether forest visitation levels would return to pre-pandemic norms or even decreased. To explore the post-crisis status of forest visits, we conducted a comprehensive analysis using data from a representative online panel survey conducted in Switzerland. Specifically, we compared data collected one week prior to the lockdown (in March 2020), on visit frequency, duration, activities and locations visited, with data collected two weeks after the lockdown was enforced (2020), and also with data from the summer of 2021. We aimed to determine if forest visitation had returned to normal by the time of the third survey. Our findings indicate that during times of crisis, visitation patterns and recreational preferences in urban green spaces, such as forests, undergo changes, with some of these changes exhibiting greater persistence than others. Meanwhile the activities during a forest visit as well as motivations of forest visits seem to return to their initial levels after the crisis, for example, the changes in the frequency or lengths of the visits appear to be more persistent. Recognizing and understanding these changes are crucial for urban planners and forest management authorities to adapt policies and effectively address the evolving needs of visitors.

The literature identifies an important research gap regarding the variability in people’s needs and preferences for Urban Green Space (UGS) depending on sociodemographic and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is essential to understand the impact of these differences on UGS utilization preferences. However, there remains a lack of a comprehensive comparative research on this topic. This study compared the analysis of park usage and preferences from urban parks accessed on foot by analyzing and comparing the results of 2,360 online questionnaires from Guangzhou (China) with 7,159 responses from London (UK) using the Monitoring of Natural Environment Engagement (MENE) survey data. The results highlighted the importance of knowing which park usage and preferences were more likely to exhibit large variations/similarities based on different socio-demographic and cultural backgrounds. For example, one difference was in the UK older people were more likely to spend less time in parks, while in Guangzhou duration increased up to the age of 50 years before declining. One similarity indicated that park users in both countries tended to spend longer times in parks if they walked longer times accessing these parks. These findings have implications for distinguishing international planning and designing principles in various social cultural contexts.

The objective of the current study was to investigate, for the first time, the association between individual-level residential greenspace and redemption of antidepressant drugs in a longitudinal nationwide population-based sample in Sweden. A nationwide population-based sample of adults residing in Sweden was studied during 2013–2016 (N_individuals = 108716; N_observations = 324378). Residential greenspace land cover was assessed via high resolution geographic information systems, at 50, 100, 300, and 500 m buffers around individual residences. Antidepressant redemptions were assessed through the Swedish National Prescribed Drug Register. Greenspace-antidepressant associations were analyzed using generalized estimating equations (GEE), adjusting for demographic, socioeconomic and urban factors. Higher greenspace within 50–500 m residential buffer zones was associated with lower levels of prevalent antidepressant redemptions (50 m, odds ratio [OR] 0.878; 100 m, OR 0.891; 300 m, OR 0.873; 500 m, OR 0.899), while only greenspace in the 50 m buffer was associated with incident antidepressant redemptions (OR 0.853), in covariate-adjusted models. In conclusion, residential greenspace is associated with statistically significantly lower prevalent and incident antidepressant medication redemptions. The association is particularly salient for greenspace in the closest buffer zone around the residence. The results underscore the importance of green infrastructure and greenspace in the immediate residential-surrounding environment for mental health, and further point towards the need for an environmental psychiatry framework, and the importance of integrating health and environmental policies, urban planning and greening.

Monitoring urbanization processes is important because they are often accompanied by intensive landscape pattern transitions and pluralistic socioeconomic changes. To effectively monitor urban expansion and support regional planning, it is essential to develop a fast, accurate and universal urban–rural classification model, especially identifying the dynamic spatial patterns of urban, urban–rural fringe and rural areas. Although deep learning can effectively detect land cover changes, its applications in urban–rural identification have received little attention due to a lack of high-quality training datasets. In this study, we develop a novel transferable full-resolution convolutional neural network (FR-Net) to identify urban-fringe-rural areas. A large-scale training dataset was constructed using field surveys and aerial photography, and a data cube was stacked by multiple typical socio-natural indicators. We took the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration region in China as a case study and identified spatiotemporal evolutions of urban-fringe-rural areas from 2000 to 2020. The results indicated that over the past two decades, the urban–rural fringe expanded outward with urban areas, and both areas gradually increased, with an inverted U-shaped growth rate. Accurate identification of these fringes can benefit regional urban–rural planning and social governance. Based on the identification results, complex socio-ecological impacts of urbanization could be further explored. Testing demonstrated that the developed FR-Net model has high accuracy and robustness. Our developed open-source FR-Net model exhibits transferability and can be applied to multi-scale urbanized areas.

Scholars have found that many new multiuse trails are associated with neighborhood change like gentrification. However, gentrification of adjacent, gentrifiable neighborhoods is not universal, and studies of localized effects of trails are needed. This study documents gentrification and upgrading in both gentrifiable and non-gentrifiable neighborhoods along three multiuse trails funded and opened in large U.S. cities (Memphis, TN; New Orleans, LA; Washington D.C.) between 1993 and 2015. We use a case-control, pre-post design with Dynamic Difference-in-Difference models, incorporating Nonparametric Propensity Score Matching for the control group selection, to test the announcement and opening effects in neighborhoods adjacent to these trails. We document heterogeneity and complexity of neighborhood change both within and across these trail corridors. When pooling the three trails, we find evidence of opening effects but little evidence of announcement effects in gentrifiable neighborhoods, and some evidence of both effects in non-gentrifiable neighborhoods. Our trail-specific analyses indicate that gentrification occurred in some, but not all, trail corridors and gentrifiable neighborhoods. Evidence indicates gentrification in trail corridors may not result solely from announcement/opening effects, but may be initiated or accelerated by the upgrading in surrounding non-gentrifiable neighborhoods following trail announcement and opening. Additionally, the gentrification process may also involve the encroachment of white residents into minority (i.e., predominantly Black), gentrifiable neighborhoods. Policymakers, planners, and advocates working to build green infrastructure like trails need to consider the complexities of local context when developing strategies to mitigate adverse consequences of gentrification and displacement.