Landscape and Urban Planning最新文献

Like other user groups, people experiencing homelessness utilize parks and other public spaces for a variety of reasons, including recreation/leisure, physical activity, socializing, and to enjoy time in nature. However, unlike other user groups, unhoused park users also often rely on parks as a setting to engage in a variety of necessary metabolic and biophysical functions. Despite the centrality of these places to both unhoused and housed members of the public, there is little research focused on managing them for equitable outcomes between these two groups. We situate our work in this context, and specifically apply intergroup conflict as a framework for our analysis and discussion. Our results indicate that housed park users felt both interpersonal and social values conflict related to specific scenarios involving unhoused users. In general, those with more negative attitudes towards people experiencing homelessness were more likely to report conflict with unhoused park users. The greatest levels of conflict were perceived in the context of non-normative park use by unhoused users (activities that would be unacceptable by any user group). We suggest a variety of passive and active management strategies to reduce perceived conflict between unhoused and housed park users, including specific zoning, amenities, enforcement, and educational strategies.

Land subdivisions, especially in rural areas, pose a significant threat to sustainable development in many regions of the world. This issue is particularly challenging to understand in complex landscapes, where many biophysical and anthropic drivers interact without the necessary land regulatory guidance. We combined kernel density analysis and machine learning modeling to unravel the spatial patterns of land subdivisions and the complex relationships between their drivers. We used the Los Lagos region in southern Chile as a study case because it is a global biodiversity hotspot where land subdivisions are constantly increasing. We identify a significant increasing trend of subdivisions. Our modeling approach showed robust performance with an R² of 0.727, RMSE of 5.109, and a bias of −0.009. The proximity to urban areas, to the coast, distance to electric mains, demographic structure, and proximity to protected areas were significant predictors of land subdivision. Fertile lands, particularly those near urban centers, have become prime targets for subdivisions, exacerbating the conflict between urban development and agricultural sustainability. We highlight the increasing number of subdivisions on threatened ecosystems and highly productive soils. We discuss the interrelationship between the drivers and conclude that subdivision is primarily associated with conventional urban sprawl, although other urbanization phenomena could also be observed in some areas. These findings provide challenges and opportunities for global spatial planning and harmony with biodiversity conservation.

Rural-to-urban transformation in Southeast Asia must be discussed as a vicious cycle of hydrologic alteration, environmental degradation, and destructive land use changes that collectively jeopardize millions of lives. Particularly, top-down flood control schemes have been linked to significant degradation of the socioeconomic and biophysical features of rural landscapes and increasingly faster agricultural decline and environmental degradation.

In recent years, growing awareness has focused on ecosystem fragility and the need for a water-sensitive approach in planning. Water management and stream renaturation are expanding and rapidly developing disciplines that have produced radical advancements in ecological, geomorphological, and hydrologic areas. Despite such progress, however, these disciplines have failed to offer major advancements in socially related fields. A paucity of scientific research exists on the association between hydrologic alteration and the transformation of the landscape—which is a socially constructed phenomenon. As a result, the socio-cultural response to the morphological transformations of water regimes in peri-urban and desakota areas remains under-investigated.

The current study questions whether a specific morphological transformation of water streams, namely channelization cum environmental mitigation, can catalyze socio-cultural reactions and thus shape peculiar land use patterns. To examine that impact, we conducted a study on the Sheung Yue River in the New Territories of Hong Kong. Longitudinal data on the morphological change of the landscape at the catchment level from 1994 to 2022 were interpreted from aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite imagery, controlling for external factors. Alongside that data, 20 semi-structured interviews with local farmers provided in-depth knowledge of societal responses to the landscape mutation. Eleven interviews with knowledgeable informants also enhanced the understanding of river management and agricultural conservation. The overall findings revealed that integrating environmental mitigation strategies in channelization can moderate the negative impacts of the engineering-driven fluvial morphological transformation. Based on these findings, the study stresses the significance of socio-environmental responsive river management and integrated urban planning strategies for policymaking in Southeast Asia.

Rewilding is increasingly viewed as a process-driven approach to land management that offers an alternative to traditional nature conservation, supports nature recovery, and responds to climate change. However, implementing rewilding in British local authorities can be challenging. This qualitative study explores the challenges and opportunities of implementing rewilding in a British local authority setting, focusing on a local authority in Hampshire. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with professional officers and councillors who influence land management in the council, to understand their understanding of rewilding and the opportunities and barriers to implementing it.

The study found that the local authority favoured rewilding as an option for land management. However, there was a need to develop greater consistency in definition and research-based understanding. The study presents a framework outlining how rewilding could contribute to the delivery of ecosystem services, including combating climate change, positive carbon sequestration, connecting spaces, and increasing the functional and biological quality of land through the adoption of twelve key principles. The research outcomes provide insights into how rewilding could be embraced by other local authorities and offer recommendations for further research at a policy and practice level, with a focus on site-based interpretation.

Forests, which harbor most of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity, have been and continue to be impacted by significant threats from human activities. Improving biodiversity conservation outcomes requires proactive and effective management actions to address the increasing risks, rather than merely maintaining forest cover. However, few studies have explored how to spatially inform diversified management actions by incorporating risk information into forest protection and restoration planning. Here, we propose an integrated framework for planning forest protection and restoration that integrates landscape resilience and habitat risk assessment, aiming to identify priority areas for diversified management actions, including active protection (AP), passive protection (PP), active restoration (AR), and passive restoration (PR). This framework consists of three key steps: i) evaluating landscape resilience based on forest amount and functional connectivity, ii) assessing habitat risk using the InVEST model, and iii) identifying priority areas and corresponding management actions by spatial overlap analysis between landscape resilience and habitat risk. Using the central region of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area as a case study, we divided it into 3307 planning units, referred to as Focal Landscapes (FLs). The results indicate that there are 636 FLs in the AP zone, 498 in the PP zone, 508 in the AR zone, and 13 in the PR zone. This research demonstrates how effectively integrating risk considerations can enhance the planning process and outcomes. This study also underscores the potential to improve the outcome and cost-effectiveness of biodiversity conservation through the formulation of differentiated management actions and comprehensive planning for protection and restoration.

The benefits and functions of urban trees are well-studied, and stewardship groups, non-governmental organizations, tree professionals, and municipal leaders aim to increase canopy cover and expand planting programs. However, urban trees also present variable risks to human safety and infrastructure based on tree species, size, age, health, and maintenance history. Furthermore, changing global climate conditions and increased storm frequency and intensity make it imperative for urban forestry professionals to mitigate risk and collaborate with stakeholders. In this qualitative study, we provide insights about urban forestry professionals’ (1) perceptions related to risk, management, and storm impacts, (2) preparation for and response to storms, (3) perceptions about community vulnerability and working with the public, and (4) perceptions about collaboration and conflict during storm management. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with urban tree professionals working with municipalities, managers of non-profit or volunteer-based groups, utility managers, and emergency managers from three cities in the United States: Jacksonville, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Across these cities, managers described direct and indirect ways that storms influenced tree planting, species selection, and removals while acknowledging aging infrastructure, limited resources, and multi-stakeholder coordination as recurring challenges. Results show that socio-demographic factors, neighborhood characteristics, historical legacies, and urban tree and canopy conditions increased perceived risk from trees during storms. Overall, participants agreed that collaboration across organizations and scales of management contributed positively to tree management in the context of storm events and the need for more collaboration among managers and with the public on storm preparation activities.

Despite the growing urbanization rate and its consequences on biodiversity and species interactions worldwide, the connection among urban green areas, performed by interacting species, is still poorly understood. We evaluated how plant and hummingbird species vary across the urban landscape of a tropical city in Brazil, identifying traits of species taking part in shared interactions between areas. We recorded plant-hummingbird interactions in five green spaces and two remnants of native vegetation, and: (1) contrasted species traits and species-level indices of both plants and hummingbirds; (2) evaluated how species and interactions vary among pairs of areas; (3) used a meta-network approach to identify which pairs of interacting species are more important in connecting areas. Species turnover was the component that better explained the beta-diversity of interactions among sites. In green spaces, plant species presented greater centrality and longer corollas than in remnants. However, both plants and hummingbirds were similarly specialized regardless of the type of area. Trees with large floral displays and with longer corollas shared more interactions and were present in more networks. Most interactions recorded in remnants are unique to them, due to the exclusiveness of some hummingbirds and plant species in such native habitat and are, thus, more sensitive to habitat conversion. Our findings support the importance of preserving remnants and using mass flowering native species in urban afforestation to maintain plant-hummingbird interactions and promote urban biodiversity. We evidenced that few interactions (16.6%) were redundant across areas, indicating a highly susceptible and fragmented system in the urban space.

The uncontrolled expansion of rural settlements caused by the imbalance in the matching of land and water resources has hindered the realization of the goal of sustainable rural development in the oasis-desert area. In this study, “water resources-land resources-oasis rural settlements” are integrated into the same framework of symbiosis development, and the evolution of rural settlements in the context of water and land resources constraints is predicted. We used the coupled “SD-SOS-FLUS” (“system dynamics-suitable oasis structure-future land use simulation”) model to predict the differences in rural settlement sizes and their spatial distribution under the inertial development water use scenario (ID) and sustainable development water use scenario (SD) in the northeast part of the Hexi Corridor in China. In addition, we explored differences in oasis circle structure and land use structure under different water allocation scenarios. Compared with a single model, the coupled model “SD-SOS-FLUS” can better simulate the symbiosis relationship between “water resources-land resources- oasis rural settlements”. Through the prediction, the proportion of water used for production in the ID scenario is still as high as 86.30 %, while the proportion of ecological water use is only 11.50 %, and the continuous imbalance of the water use structure results in the area of arable land and rural settlements will be increased to 7,473.21 km² and 487.16 km². It increased by 115.63 km² and 41.28 km² respectively compared to 2020, which in turn made the oasis area expanding outward, and the radius R of the oasis also increased from 53.65 km in 2020 to 54.79 km in 2030. The area of arable land and rural settlements under water and land resource constraints in the SD scenario decreased to 5223.56 km² and 105.04 km². The contraction of the oasis increases the transition zone circle width B₂ from 19.88 km in 2020 to 24.58 km in 2030, an increase of 5 km compared to the ID scenario. As a result of the spatial reconfiguration, the number of rural settlement patches decreased from 1.04 × 10⁴ to 0.15 × 10⁴ in 2020, saving 3.41 × 10⁴ ha of land after optimization.

The increasing heat stress in cities due to climate change and urbanisation can prevent people from using urban green spaces. Irrigating vegetation is a promising strategy to cool urban green spaces in summer. Irrigation scheduling, such as daytime vs night-time irrigation and the frequency of irrigation in a day, may influence the cooling benefit of irrigation. This study aimed to investigate whether irrigation scheduling can be optimised to increase the cooling benefit and determine how the cooling benefit changes with weather conditions. A field experiment with twelve identical turfgrass plots (three replicates × four irrigation treatments) was set up to measure the afternoon cooling benefits of irrigation. The four treatments included: no irrigation, single night-time irrigation (4 mm d^–1), single daytime irrigation (4 mm d^–1) and multiple daytime irrigation (4 x 1 mm d^–1). The cooling benefit was defined as the air temperature difference measured at 1.1 m above the turfgrass between the irrigated and unirrigated treatments (air temperature sensor accuracy ± 0.2 °C). The afternoon (12:00–15:59) mean cooling benefit of multiple daytime irrigation (–0.9 °C) which was significantly stronger than that of single night-time irrigation (–0.6 °C) and single daytime irrigation (–0.5 °C). Regardless of irrigation scheduling, the afternoon mean cooling benefits of irrigation were greater for days when background air temperature, vapour pressure deficit and incoming shortwave radiation were greater. The findings suggested that irrigation scheduling can be optimised to increase the cooling benefit of urban green space irrigation without increasing overall water use.