Tourist perceptions and uses of urban green infrastructure: An exploratory cross-cultural investigation

Abstract

Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) serves both inhabitants' and visitors' numerous and various needs. This research aimed to enhance knowledge regarding the role of UGI in urban tourism. The research questions addressed tourists' perceptions of UGI, their understanding and uses of UGI, and the ways that this understanding influenced their travel choice to specific urban destinations. A cross-cultural comparative study among urban tourists was carried out in eight European countries. The selection of case studies followed a roughly comparative logic, employing the same on-site questionnaire survey administered in a sample of large and medium size cities in Southern European, Central European and Northern European countries. Looking from the perspective of the tourists' countries of origin, our findings validate a well-established trend in international tourism, namely the fact that neighbouring countries tend to be the most significant tourist markets of an urban destination. The other major finding confirmed the most well-known tourist movement patterns of Northern and Central Europeans travelling to the Mediterranean for tourism purposes. While the study revealed that the majority of the tourists interviewed were not very familiar with the term 'Green Infrastructure', nor with specific UGI features offered in the visited cities, the importance of UGI was acknowledged and viewed in a mostly very positive light. The majority of respondents enjoyed visiting UGI and used it for some light physical activity or for purposes of relaxation, socialization, and in order to explore the culture and society of the destination city. The fact that most UGI in the case study cities is located around or within a short distance from important heritage sites provided UGI with an indirect possibility of being included in the tourists' visiting plans. In conclusion, the results of this study may prove to be very helpful to local and regional authorities in considering how to plan, manage and promote an urban tourism destination's green infrastructure as part of the tourism offer.

Urban Forestry in Brazilian Amazonia

“…Professionals must also consider the concept of green infrastructure, involving environmental strategies based on multidisciplinary teams of forestry, architecture, construction, and urbanism, aiming at sustainability in cities. Urban trees provide numerous ecosystem services to both inhabitants and visitors, thus local authorities should consider how to plan, manage, and promote urban green infrastructure as part of the tourism offer [63].…”

Ecosystem Service Use and the Motivations for Use in Central Parks in Three European Cities

“…In this study, we focused on parks covering broad socio-environmental gradients in Europe [50,58] playing a central role in each city while providing a high degree of common park features to ensure comparability (e.g., location, size, landscape elements). We argue that integrative approaches linking the assessment of influencing factors with the assessment of user motivations and use of UGS can substantially contribute to increasing our understanding of ES and UGS use, also transferable to rural or natural environments.…”

“…While many of the studies addressing user ES preferences focus on the assessment of cultural ES [50,56,57], we argue that a broader range of provisioning, regulating and cultural ES needs to be studied to better understand ES user behaviour to derive recommendations for the management and design of multifunctional UGS. Comparative studies, simultaneously assessing driving factors, a broad range of ES uses, motives and perceptions of different user groups across Europe (or other regions) such as Terkenli et al [58], are currently lacking and the study presented here intends to contribute to filling this research gap [59].…”

Traditional versus Modern? Perceptions and Preferences of Urban Park Users in Iran

“…As Clark and Jauhiainen [5] point out in their analysis of the development of key European cities, political and economic success leads to competition between cities and urban planning can be used to manage urban growth and improve liveability. Urban green and blue infrastructure, including parks, can play a major role in attracting businesses and people as well as attracting tourists and for city branding [6] and for offering spaces for improving the physical and mental health and well-being of residents [7]. Green (and 2 of 27 blue) spaces in the urban environment also play a significant role in urban planning since they open a window into a society and they represent symbols of its cultural and social expression [8].…”