Urban green infrastructure: A review on valuation toolkits from an urban planning perspective

Abstract

As a response to increasing urbanization and changing weather and climatic patterns, urban green infrastructure (UGI) emerged as a concept to increase resilience within the urban boundaries. Given that implementing these (semi-) natural solutions in practice requires a clear overview of the costs and benefits, valuation becomes ever important. A range of decision-support tools for green infrastructure and ecosystem services exist, developed for various purposes. This paper reviews the potential of 10 shortlisted and existing valuation tools to support investment decisions of urban green infrastructure. In the assessment, the functionality is regarded specifically from the urban planning and decision-making viewpoint. The toolkits were evaluated on 12 different criteria. After analyzing the toolkits on these criteria, the findings are evaluated on the (mis)match with specific requirements in the urban planning and management context. Secondly, recommendations and guidelines are formulated to support the design of simple valuation tools, tailored to support the development of green infrastructure in urban areas. Approaching the valuation toolkits biophysically and (socio-)economically provides an integral overview of the challenges and opportunities of the capacities of each framework. It was found that most tools are not designed for the peculiarities of the urban context. Several elements contribute to the hampering uptake of GI valuation tools. Firstly, the limited effort in the economic case for green infrastructure remains a burden to use toolkits to compare grey and green alternatives. Secondly, tools are currently seldom designed for the peculiarities of cities: urban ecosystem (dis)services, multi-scalability, life-span assessments of co-benefits and the importance of social benefits. Thirdly, toolkits should be the result of co-development between the scientific community and local authorities in order to create toolkits that are tailor made to the specific needs in the urban planning process. It can be concluded that current tools, are not readily applicable to support decision making as such. However, if applied cautiously, they can have an indicative role to pinpoint further targeted and in-depth analyses.

Environmental principles for planting of greenery in settlements of Baikal Siberia

“…We have taken a note of the climate-forming and climate-regulating functions of green spaces [17,18] and their ability to qualitatively affect the ecological conditions of the city [1,19,20], accompanied by changes in vegetation phenology and the increase of the growing period in urban conditions [21]. Also we have taken into account the methodological methods of research on urbanization of territories [22], recommendations and guidelines for assessing green infrastructure [23], mechanisms for increasing the ecological efficiency of cities through the development of the industrial structure [24], including electricity [25], the development of public-private partnerships to create infrastructure of urbanized areas [26].…”

“…Efficient planting of greenery in urban infrastructure is not cheap. But, as the work of domestic and foreign researchers shows, the solution to this problem is also possible [13,23,26]. Residents are ready to pay for improving the quality of the urban environment and its aesthetics.…”

Green infrastructure: systematic literature review

“…According to the high-frequency keyword analysis and keyword cluster analysis in the previous sections, there are many studies that consider environmental and social benefits, as well as the valuation is often defined in biogeophysical terms. Although it is widely recognized that green infrastructures can influence several economic outcomes (De Groot et al, 2010;Kim & Song, 2019;Van Oijstaeijen et al, 2020), the absence of co-occurring keywords and clustering information related to economic benefit, indicates a lack of economic related research. A systematic review found that the economic valuation practices at green infrastructure are rare, leading to uncertainty of economic benefit and impact (Van Oijstaeijen et al, 2020).…”

Green and Blue Infrastructures as the Structure of a Bioregion: The Case of the Pontina Bioregion

“…Integrating the (bio-)physical dimensions with the on socio-cultural, institutional, and political conditions lead also to identify a series of barriers for G&BI uptake such as the lack of economic and social evaluation and the lack of integration with other urban (or spatial) dimensions. If some authors argue that economic value with its benefits and appropriate finance methods should be introduced to develop credible business projects for informed decision-making of local authority [16], others maintain that economic evaluation of ecosystem services and G&BI impacts lead to the commodification of fundamental non-renewable resources undermining their sustainability and equity dimension [17]. The adoption of a bioregional "scale" and approach can contribute to overcome this dichotomy linking the ecological dimension to the local economic dimension.…”