Complex Systems Thinking Approach to Urban Greenery to Provide Community-Tailored Solutions and Enhance the Provision of Cultural Ecosystem Services

Abstract

This paper presents a GIS-based method for supporting local administrations in the design of urban green areas while taking into account the complexity of the whole system. The proposed method merges the criteria of availability, accessibility, attractiveness, usability, and suitability in a multi-level approach (city, neighborhood green area) to assist in the selection of which services within green areas to enhance from those requested by citizens. The case study is an urban park in a medium-sized Italian city (Perugia). The results demonstrate that the available urban green spaces amount to 34.7 m2 per person, but only 24% of citizens have adequate access to a green area providing at least an adequate level of service, and 18% of them are without access to any appropriately equipped green area. Furthermore, citizens have limited knowledge of their city’s urban green system as a whole. Indeed, 41% of the requested services were already available in other accessible green areas with attractive and readily available dedicated equipment. These areas were suggested as alternative solutions. To achieve a complex systems approach, our results suggest observing similar systems with various and adaptable scales and studying them as open networks composed of heterogeneous internal and external variables.

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

“…First, the study focuses on carbon storage, carbon sequestration, pollution removal, and runoff avoided, not considering other ecosystem services provided by the urban forest, such as cultural services [14,67] humidity control, temperature control [8], and many others. Other scholars developed tools for using ecosystem services assessment in urban planning, such as the one designed by Acosta et al [8] for urban heat island mitigation by an urban forest, or the one developed by Menconi et al [67] to enhance the cultural ecosystem services' provision by urban parks. For local administrators, it would be essential to integrate these tools to achieve an overall awareness of the value of the urban forests.…”

Connectedness among Urban Parks from the Users’ Perspective: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The urban green space system is a complicated network [ 13 ]. On the one hand, the park itself consists of many elements (flora and fauna, water bodies, facilities, and users), and the changes in the combination of its internal elements affect the realization of the value of the park and the visits of residents [ 14 ]. Zhang et al [ 15 ] and Dong et al [ 16 ] proposed vegetation as the key quality indicator that affected the park-visiting experience of the residents.…”

“…Leisure and entertainment facilities also largely determined the frequency of visits to the park [ 17 , 18 ]. Furthermore, the park system can be a green network within the city’s sustainable system, which is dynamically related to other components [ 14 ], such as urban functional service facilities, landscape patterns [ 19 ], the city’s crime map [ 20 ], and the relationship between urban parks and sociodemographic variables [ 2 ]. Park [ 6 ] mentioned that parks are, to some extent, fragmented and nonconnected and that these green particles should be woven into the broader ecosystem.…”

“…Park [ 6 ] mentioned that parks are, to some extent, fragmented and nonconnected and that these green particles should be woven into the broader ecosystem. Menconi et al [ 14 ] declared that one element in a single green space may change the balance of the system. This element can produce positive synergy or conflict with other external elements and variables.…”

Linking Sustainability, Resilience and Liveability with Smart City Development: Modeling Interconnections Using Systems Approach

“…Factors that seek to enhance social cohesion hold a positive correlation on the quality of life (Paramita et al, 2021). Furthermore, as population increases, the physical and physiological accessibility to green urban areas are compromised, which hinders community participation (Menconi et al, 2021). Community participation positively predicted better quality of life when a pool of active population in a socially cohesive environment was put under study by Chen and Zhang, (2021).…”