Greening Blocks: A Conceptual Typology of Practical Design Interventions to Integrate Health and Climate Resilience Co-Benefits

Abstract

It is increasingly evident that exposure to green landscape elements benefits human health. Urban green space in cities is also recognized as a crucial adaptation response to changes in climate and its subsequent effects. The exploration of conceptual and practical intersections between human health, green spaces, and climate action is needed. Evidence-based guidance is needed for stakeholders, practitioners, designers, and citizens in order to assess and manage urban green spaces that maximize co-benefits for both human health and climate resilience. This paper proposes interventions that provide strategic green space enhancement at the neighborhood and block scale. We propose eight tangible green space interventions and associated metrics to integrate climate resilience and population health co-benefits into urban green space design and planning: View from within, Plant entrances, Bring nature nearby, Retain the mature, Generate diversity, Create refuge, Connect experiences, and Optimize green infrastructure. These interventions represent a hierarchy of functional design concepts that respond to experiential qualities and physical/psychological dimensions of health, and which enhance resilience at a range of social scales from the individual to the neighborhood. The interventions also reveal additional research needs in green space design, particularly in neighborhood-level contexts.

Integrating Remote Sensing and Street View Images to Quantify Urban Forest Ecosystem Services

“…The block clusters obtained with the REDCAP method in fact meet the requirements set by Barron et al [52] (p. 21) to define the "neighborhood scale" as a set of cohesive blocks. They highlight that "The neighborhood scale captures human green space experiences at shorter distances, allowing for consideration of accessibility, sightlines, aesthetics, vegetation layering, and quality of greenspace design.…”

Urban Trees and Human Health: A Scoping Review

“…Additional cross-disciplinary research is needed to better understand the risks of climate change on both human health and urban forests, including an exploration of how rapid environmental changes will affect tree health, and the consequent cascading impacts on human health, such as psychophysiological stress and heat-related illnesses and deaths. Such risks also highlight the importance of proactive urban forest management practices to secure and expand the ecological and health benefits of trees in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation [228].…”

Climate adaptation actions for urban forests and human health

“…519 ► Optimize nature views from windows and interactions in and around the common spaces of civic service facilities, such as libraries, community centers, and government buildings, to model climate-friendly landscapes and create restorative opportunities as people engage in meetings, wait for service providers, take breaks, and arrive or depart from the building. 520 ► Optimize nature views and interactions in places where people work on focused tasksincluding workplaces, schools, healthcare centers, and campuses-as brief, frequent nature encounters improve creativity and restore cognitive capacity for task attention and focus. 460,[520][521][522] ► Collaborate with transportation and public works departments to promote shady corridors, create Green Streets or Complete Streets, 523 and provide comfortable connecting spaces for "10 Minute Walks"-a nature and health metric being adopted by many local governments-to parks and green spaces.…”

“…520 ► Optimize nature views and interactions in places where people work on focused tasksincluding workplaces, schools, healthcare centers, and campuses-as brief, frequent nature encounters improve creativity and restore cognitive capacity for task attention and focus. 460,[520][521][522] ► Collaborate with transportation and public works departments to promote shady corridors, create Green Streets or Complete Streets, 523 and provide comfortable connecting spaces for "10 Minute Walks"-a nature and health metric being adopted by many local governments-to parks and green spaces. 524 ► Plan and reinforce access to forests, groves, and significant trees for forest therapy and bathing programs, as some of the most rigorous studies of nature and health indicate that this activity supports multiple health improvements, including stress reduction, improved immune function, and reductions in symptoms of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.…”