Effectiveness of Green Infrastructure Location Based on a Social Well-Being Index

Abstract

Urban Green Infrastructure (GI) provides promising opportunities to address today’s pressing issues in cities, mainly resulting from uncurbed urbanization. GI has the potential to make significant contributions to make cities more sustainable by satisfying the growing appetite for higher standards of living as well as helping cities adapt to extreme climate events. To leverage the potentials of GI, this article aims to investigate the effectiveness of GI that can enhance social welfare benefits in the triple-bottom line of urban sustainability. First, publicly available data sets representing social demographic, climate, and built environmental elements are collected and indexed to normalize its different scales by the elements, which is termed as the “Social Well-being Index.” Second, a random forest regressor was applied to identify the impacts of variables on the indexed scores by region. As a result, both the Seoul and Gyeonggi-do models found the most significant relationship with the type of GI to prevent pollutants and disasters, followed by GI types to conserve and improve the environment in Seoul and GI types to serve activity spaces in Gyeonggi-do. Furthermore, variables such as population, number of pollutants, and employment rate in Seoul were found significant and employment rate, population, and air pollution were significant in Gyeonggi-do. Finally, a scenario analysis is conducted to investigate the impacts of the overall index score with additional GI facilitation according to the model’s findings. This article can provide effective strategies for implementing policies about GI by considering regional conditions. The analytical processes in this article can provide useful insights into preparing effective ecological and environmental improvement policies accordingly.

Multifunctional Urban Green Infrastructure Development in a Sub-Saharan Country: The Case of Friendship Square Park, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“…To date, the analyses of UGI reported by several authors [22][23][24][25][26] revealed that UGIs have multiple benefits, such as recreation, improving physical and mental health, and regulating services. However, less reports have been found on the reduction of unemployment and economic benefits of UGI that serve as a smokeless industry (urban tourism), which has a significant role in poverty alleviation of developing countries, such as Ethiopia.…”

“…However, less reports have been found on the reduction of unemployment and economic benefits of UGI that serve as a smokeless industry (urban tourism), which has a significant role in poverty alleviation of developing countries, such as Ethiopia. In addition, many UGIs lack appropriate planning and urban infrastructure networks, and do not focus on preventing human induced climate changes and lately emerged social health concerns, such as the COVID-19 pandemic [23][24][25][26]. Out of 171 reports on UGI, the vast majority of the research was from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.…”

Influence of Spatial Accessibility and Environmental Quality on Youths’ Visit to Green Open Spaces (GOS) in Akure, Nigeria

“…Indeed, perceived lack of exposure to green space has been independently linked with overweight in the youths [2] and mental and physical health issues [16]. Following this, the United Nations General Assembly (2016) noted that the provision and usage of green spaces are integral parts of the Habitat III Agenda aimed at promoting human health and well-being in urban areas in the 21st Century and contributing to the attainment of the sustainable development goals [17] This provision of green open spaces will reduce the effect of global climate change which has been projected to cause changes in climate parameters and directly affect organism on earth [18].…”