The Method of Planning Green Infrastructure System with the Use of Landscape-Functional Units (Method LaFU) and its Implementation in the Wrocław Functional Area (Poland)

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) is planned at various scales, including a regional one: city-regions. Strategic GI planning included in the city-regions spatial development policy can contribute to their sustainable development through, among others, providing a range of ecosystem services. In order to meet the challenge of planning GI on a regional scale, the authors present the Method of Landscape-Functional Units (Method LaFU), which is used for the planning and evaluation of such systems. This method was tested in the Wrocław Functional Area (WFA), which is characterized by many negative processes, primarily uncontrolled development of built-up areas, fragmentation of landscape, and declining natural and semi-natural areas. The presented results show the effectiveness of the Method LaFU in GI planning and, above all, in its assessment, which makes it possible to identify problem areas that are at risk but still important for the functioning of the GI system. This allows for quick decision making by entities responsible for spatial planning in the region. The proposed method can also be used in other city-regions.

Using Different Levels of Information in Planning Green Infrastructure in Luanda, Angola

“…For example, see the approach developed by Hui et al [90], who studied a large number of cities in China and who went through a holistic reading of street vegetation at the level of the city system that could delimit a GI. The same is true when compared to the Ignatieva method; Stewart and Meurk [28], Irena et al [28,36], Douglas [44], Benson [62], Niedźwiecka-Filipiak [91] and Pei [92].…”

Developing a Framework for the Implementation of Landscape and Greenspace Indicators in Sustainable Urban Planning. Waterfront Landscape Management: Case Studies in Gdańsk, Poznań and Bristol

“…Despite the fact that the cities in Poland, among other Eastern EU countries, generally exhibit relatively high ratio of residents' accessibility to greenspaces, as shown by a recent study [97], ensuring the ecological, structural and visual quality of these greenspaces remains a different issue. To effectively improve the quality of green infrastructure, its management should be more closely integrated with strategic and planning documents at both local and regional scale in the form of mandatory provisions [98]. Moreover, in a multi-scale approach, two implementation scenarios can be distinguished: an administrative one, which is led by municipal authorities, and a bottom-up one, in which local initiatives and various funding streams play a vital role, as exemplified by the analysis of green infrastructure planning in Warsaw [99].…”

Implementing Green Infrastructure for the Spatial Planning of Peri-Urban Areas in Geneva, Switzerland

“…Furthermore, commonly employed methods for mapping GI including overlay analyses with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), morphological spatial pattern analysis, minimum path model, graph-based analysis, and landscape-functional units [37] are not well-suited to account for trade-offs and synergies among GI features. For such analyses, spatial conservation prioritization is widely used among conservation biologists to allocate conservation actions and protected areas [38,39].…”