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ZEP : Zeitschrift für internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik 45 (2022) 2, S. 16-19, Sozialarbeiterische Interventionen am Beispiel des Projekts Querbeet im Kontext von Exklusionstendenzen im urbanen Raum: Durch das Wachsen moderner Städte erhöht sich auch der Druck auf den angespannten Wohnungsmarkt. Menschen ohne festen Wohnsitz und mit Suchterkrankungen werden im urbanen Raum als abweichend markiert und aus sozialen Bezügen exkludiert. Anhand des Projekts Querbeet wird eine pflanzengestützte sozialarbeiterische Intervention dargestellt, die auf urbane Problemlagen reagiert und die Integration marginalisierter Bevölkerungsgruppen anstrebt. (DIPF/Orig.), Social work interventions shown by the example of the project Querbeet in the context of excluding tendencies in urban spaces: Urban growth leads to increasing strain on the already intense housing market. Homeless or addicted people in urban environments are marked as divergent and excluded from social contexts. The project Querbeet is used as an example for plant supported social work, that reacts to urban problems and to improve integration of marginalized population groups. (DIPF/Orig.)

The Covid-19 pandemic and energy, climate, and demographic crises have shown how cities are vulnerable to these impacts and how the access to green and blue spaces has become highly relevant to people. One strategy that we can observe is the strong focus on the resilience discourse, meaning implementing more green and blue spaces in urban areas, such as at previous brownfield quarters. However, social justice implications of urban greening have been overlooked for a long time. The implementation of strategies to improve the quality and availability of the green and blue infrastructures may indeed have negative outcomes as far as housing accessibility is concerned by trigging gentrification processes. Issues related to environmental justice and socio-spatial justice are increasing in contemporary cities and call for a better understanding of the global and local mechanisms of production and reproduction of environmental and spatial inequalities. This thematic issue includes eleven articles with different methodologies, with examples from Europe and North America as well as different lenses of green gentrification. Some articles focus more on the question of costs, benefits, and distributional consequences of various infrastructural options for urban greening. Others, instead, discuss how the strategic urban planning tools and policy processes take into account distributional consequences, with specific attention on participatory processes.

This article analyzes the acceptance of climate policy measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam to understand how policy and planning interrelate with private and public interests. While legitimizing climate policy and measures, values can also cause conflict when operationalized locally. By analyzing value conflicts in public discourse, we gain insights into questions of environmental behavior and their influence on the acceptance of climate action. We report on quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis covering 410 articles from Dutch newspapers between 2015 and 2021 in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam related to the energy transition, mobility, and urban greening. Our findings show that public discourse mostly remains abstract and detached from local contexts. As experts and politicians dominate the debate, the discourse mainly addresses science- and policy-related arguments, representing the public interest but reflecting only insufficiently private interests and the local (re-)distribution of benefits and burdens. Therefore, we attribute spontaneous protest to the lack of reference to differentiated values at the local level and find the argument of NIMBYism insufficient to explain residents’ opposition. Instead, our findings point to experts’ and decision-makers’ lack of recognition of the local “idea of place” and a community’s identity as an explanation for the sudden emergence of protests. Here, urban design may bridge the gap between policy and planning by translating technical and economic constraints into place-specific designs.

Urban areas can be conceptualized as large and ever-changing playgrounds in which many diverse agents (households, businesses, developers, municipalities, etc.) are active. The interactions between the playground qualities and the players’ preferences are not unidirectional. However, sometimes, external events may change the perception of the playground qualities in the player’s eyes. The recent Covid-19 pandemic and its associated precautionary measures are a clear example. During the pandemic, the value of existing urban green infrastructures has increased, as lockdowns were imposed, and distance working became widespread. The concept of “passive” ecological gentrification is developed in order to characterize this type of process. In contrast with “active” ecological gentrification, caused by purposeful intervention in the urban arena, “passive” ecological gentrification is triggered by a change of context, such as the pandemic impacts. This article focuses on the appreciation of green urban infrastructures by urbanites during the pandemic, showing that the willingness to pay to live near green and open spaces has increased in general, but with significant spatial differences. The main research questions are: (a) How does the player’s perception of the playground’s value change in times of pandemic? (b) Do these changes support the emergence of “passive” ecological gentrification? The methodology is based on the analysis of changes in property values over time as an indirect measure of a location’s appeal, looking specifically at areas near green urban infrastructures, both in the inner city and in the peripheral areas. Relatively large changes in property value over time are a possible indicator of ongoing gentrification processes: When they are observed near existing green infrastructures, and not related to redevelopment initiatives, “passive” ecological gentrification may be the result. Using detailed spatial data on land use and property prices from the Netherlands, we find evidence that supports the hypothesis of a “passive” ecological gentrification drift towards areas around urban parks and green infrastructures in general.

Cities worldwide face multiple social and ecological challenges, such as climate change and its impacts. Adapting and transforming our urban environments is urgent to improve their resilience to uncertain scenarios. These challenges require renewed urban solutions and force us to rethink their design processes. Multiple actors are involved in such processes, coming from different sectors, and sometimes having conflicting agendas and knowledge backgrounds. Many of these processes can be considered co-design processes, with actors interacting to improve the design quality, legitimacy, and feasibility. Many conceptualise cities as social-ecological systems and public spaces are their subsystems. A collaborative approach to designing public spaces contributes to integrating the social-ecological knowledge from the public, private, and citizen actors. The question remains: How is sometimes conflicting social-ecological knowledge integrated into public space co-design processes? We study two large-scale urban parks in Chile. We framed them as social-ecological systems and analysed their co-design processes. This study aims to provide insights into the difficult-to-grasp phenomena of knowledge integration in co-design processes. We analysed these cases in previous studies. Now we provide insights into social-ecological knowledge integration in co-design processes. Although framed in Latin America, the findings may be helpful elsewhere.

While global urban development is increasingly oriented towards strategies to facilitate green urbanism, potential community trade-offs are largely overlooked. This article presents the findings of a quantitative and qualitative meta-analysis of the current literature on green gentrification (the process leading the implementation of an environmental planning agenda displacing or excluding the most economically vulnerable population) in connection with climate change adaptation and mitigation across the globe. Based on specific keywords, we selected the recorded entry of 212 articles from Scopus covering the period 1977–2021. Our review focused on the historical and geographical development of the literature on urban greening and gentrification. The analysis shows that the concept of green gentrification has strong roots within the environmental justice debate in the US. In terms of intervention, most studies focused on urban parks and trees and were primarily oriented towards restoration. However, debates around the role of green facades, green roofs, or blue infrastructure (such as ponds and rivers) and other nature-based solutions as a driver for green gentrification are few and far between. Finally, we also identified a strong gap between the observation of green gentrification and potential countermeasures that respond to it. Most studies suggest that the existence of a stronger collaborative planning process within the affected communities may overcome the challenge of green gentrification. Based on our results, we identify several gaps and new research directions to design a green and just city.

Since its introduction, the concept of “nature-based solutions” has gained much attention, drawing public funds and private investments. Nature-based solutions conceptualise the use of nature in planning as a cost-efficient and sustainable means to address societal, economic, and ecological challenges. However, this “triple win” premise tends to conceal potentially resulting injustices, such as displacement through green gentrification. While these injustices have attracted the attention of environmental justice scholars, as exemplified by the “just green enough” approach, links to the “nature-based solutions” concept are mostly implicit. Further, the concept of environmental privilege, questioning who benefits from created natural amenities, has rarely been taken up. This article, therefore, argues that environmental justice should be linked closely to nature-based solutions. Supported by a theoretical perspective, the article aims at exploring who benefits from, and who loses out on, urban nature-based solutions processes. It builds on a qualitative literature review of the scholarly landscape on environmental justice and urban greening while linking to nature-based solutions, adding perspectives of environmental privilege. In this, it attempts to offer three important contributions to the current academic discussion. First, the article provides an overview of the debate on urban greening, (in)justice, and environmental privilege. Second, it relates the concept of nature-based solutions to the debate on environmental justice, opening nature-based solutions up for critique and conceptual refinements. Third, it outlines a way forward for reframing nature-based solutions through the lens of environmental justice and privilege. Thus, this article provides a starting point for further discussions on the implementation of just nature-based solutions in cities.

In the global hegemonic resilience discourse, green infrastructure is projected as a “win-win” approach to urban planning. Following the trend of adopting resilience as the new silver bullet for urban development, and in the midst of the recent financial crisis, Thessaloniki, Greece, joined the 100 Resilient Cities network of the Rockefeller Foundation in 2014. This event marked a shift in the city’s public space production and governance programme, introducing new private actors in decision-making processes, an emphasis on green space economic benefits, and an extensive regeneration programme heavily focused on the city centre. The article scrutinises these changes to uncover the policy implications of the turn to resilience in green public space production. Based on data on green public space spatial distribution; semi-structured interviews with municipal representatives and senior employees and representatives of the government, civil society, and local professional associations; policy document analysis; and comparative analysis of all relevant development and planning documents, and drawing on Brenner and Theodore’s (2005) conceptualisation of neoliberalism, the article argues that greening policies in Thessaloniki form an ongoing enclosing process of the urban green commons that articulates in a threefold manner: their discursive construction as “natural assets,” the implementation of spatially selective policies, and the post-politicisation of decision-making processes.

Average temperatures continue to rise throughout the world due to climate change and, thus, also in Europe, often occurring as heat waves. The negative effects of climate change-related heat waves can be observed, especially in urban areas where land sealing is the greatest and so is population density. Past studies have indicated that green volume can provide climate improvement by balancing humidity and regulating temperature. This study aims to estimate the distribution of surface heat islands and green volume and test the relationship between these variables in a case study of Bochum, Germany. A method to develop a temporally longitudinal 30-m Landsat 8-based land surface temperature (LST) analysis and 30-m LiDAR-based green volume dataset are presented, and their relationship is tested using Pearson’s correlation (n = 148,204). The results show that heat islands are moderately negatively correlated with green volume (r = −0.482; p < 0.05), LST can vary as much as 28 degrees °C between heat islands and densely vegetated areas, and the distribution is heterogeneous across Bochum., Sustainability;14(21)

Synergies between urban planning and public health were synthesized a decade ago by the Lancet Commission’s article “Shaping Cities for Health: Complexity and the Planning of Urban Environments in the 21st Century.” Since then, innovative research projects, urban planning projects, and accumulated experience from the World Health Organization Healthy Cities project confirm that transdisciplinary contributions enable the achievement of core principles of healthy cities. This article clarifies important differences between the content, scope, and outcomes of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects about public health and urban planning. It explains why transdisciplinary contributions are more likely to bridge the applicability gap between knowledge and practice in response to persistent urban health challenges; notably, they transgress the boundaries of public health and medical science; they prioritize political action in both the formal and informal construction sectors; and they include citizens, community associations, and private enterprises as partners in consortia for concerted action. This article proposes a radical shift from incremental, reactive, and corrective approaches in planning for urban health to proactive and anticipative contributions using backcasting and alternative scenarios that prioritize health. The article uses the case of public green spaces in planning for urban health. It identifies the shortcomings of many empirical studies that are meant to promote and sustain health before describing and illustrating an alternative way forward.

Rising vulnerability of the urban green infrastructure (UGI) is grabbing global attention, for which inclusive urban landscape and greening policies (ULGP) and frameworks are crucial to support green growth. As such, this research intends to explore the local community’s perspective to assemble sustainable UGI indicators for vital taxonomy of the urban green space (UGS) elements, aiming to develop a multi-functional and sustainable UGI-indicator-based framework that is eco-friendly and supports green-resilient cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Pakistan. An in-depth household survey was executed in three KP districts: Charsadda, Peshawar, and Mardan, placing self-administered 192 questionnaires while covering themes around climate change adaptation, urban resilience, and UGI. Relative importance index (RII) and the interquartile range (IQR) methods were set up for data analysis that revealed excellent reliability (α > 0.88) and internal consistency. The results confirmed community-based UGI indicators with a focus on promoting green-energy-saving strategies as e-imp (level 9, RII = 0.915), while other (ten) UGI indicators as important (RII = 0.811–0.894) and (eleven) as moderately important (RII = 0.738–0.792). These UGI indicators were found to be enhanced by UGS elements (RII ≥ 0.70). These findings provide a foundation for urban policy change and the development of a sustainable UGI framework to build an eco-regional paradigm for greener growth., Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health;19(19)

Urban residents are often unevenly vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events due to socio-economic factors and insufficient greenspace. This can be amplified if citizens are not meaningfully consulted in the planning and design decisions, with changes to greenspace having detrimental impacts on local communities, e.g., through green gentrification. These deficiencies can be addressed through inclusive landscape-level collaborative planning and design processes, where residents are fully engaged in the co-creation of urban greenspaces. A promising way to support co-creation efforts is gamifying technology-based interactive decision support systems (DSSs). Gamification, the incorporation of video game elements or play into non-game contexts, has previously been used for DSSs in urban planning and to inform the public about the impacts of climate change. However, this has yet to combine informational goals with design-play functionality in the redesign of urban greenspaces. We conducted a review of state-of-the-art video game DSSs used for urban planning engagement and climate education. Here, we propose that gamified DSSs should incorporate educational elements about climate change alongside the interactive and engaging elements of urban planning games, particularly for real-world scenarios. This cross-disciplinary approach can facilitate improved community engagement in greenspace planning, informing design and management strategies to ensure multiple benefits for people and the environment in climate-vulnerable cities.

Increased demand for land for economic and residential purposes has engendered tensions among different land users in Indian cities. Consequently, the development and management of environmentally just and organized green spaces involve major challenges. In this article, using the context of three Indian cities (Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, and Kolkata), the factors that contribute to environmentally unjust development and management of organized green spaces were examined and various strategies that would lead to environmental justice were evaluated. A survey research method was used to collect data, followed by factor analysis and ordinal regression modelling. Findings suggest that factors under five principal components contributed to environmental injustice, including: community features and infrastructure related to organized green space; the economics of development and management of organized green space; linking green space to environment and health; spatial development, land use, and accessibility; and land availability and governance of the supply of green space. Strategies such as community-led, green space development and management; fair and equitable distribution of green spaces; improvement of accessibility; connecting green spaces to benefits of health; and mandatory linkage of built infrastructure with the provision of green spaces would ensure environmental justice.

Zur Erholung, der Bewegung und dem Aufenthalt im Freien werden besonders innerstädtische Grünflächen, aber auch Waldflächen von verschiedenen Bevölkerungsgruppen aufgesucht. Bei der Nutzung des Freiraums spielen bioklimatische und lufthygienische Faktoren eine wichtige Rolle. Während von der grünen Infrastruktur viele Vorteile ausgehen, können allerdings auch gesundheitliche Beeinträchtigungen durch sogenannte biologische Noxe entstehen. Ziel dieses Projektes ist es, möglichst lokalklimatisch, lufthygienisch und gesundheitlich optimierte Routen am Beispiel des Ozonbildungspotenzials auszuweisen. Um dies zu erreichen, soll eine Applikation programmiert werden, die initial als "Klima-Isopren-Navigationssystem" nutzbar ist und eine optimierte human-biometeorologische Routenführung für Nutzer aufzeigt, unabhängig vom Standort.

Viele Problemfelder beschäftigen derzeit Städte bei der Wohnraumschaffung. Zum einen stehen sie vor der Herausforderung, dem steigenden Siedlungsdruck trotz der begrenzten Flächenverfügbarkeit entgegenzuwirken und den Wohnungsbedarf zu decken. Darüber hinaus gibt es in vielen Städten einen hohen Anteil an Ein- und Zweifamilienhäusern und eine damit verbundene ineffiziente Flächennutzung. Aufgrund dieser Ausgangssituation und durch den akuten und stetigen Anstieg der Preise für Bauland und Baumaterialien sind innovative Lösungen hinsichtlich der zusätzlichen Schaffung von Wohnraum gefragt. Eine Möglichkeit bietet die Mobilisierung und Ausschöpfung vorhandener Nachverdichtungspotenziale in den Städten. Das Projekt BONUS setzt genau hier an und integriert zusätzlich, neben energieeffizienten Sanierungsmaßnahmen, mit den Themenfeldern Grün- und Freiraum sowie Mobilität weitere Aspekte in die Nachverdichtung. Somit sollen negative Begleiterscheinungen von Nachverdichtungsprozessen wie die Reduzierung von qualitativen Grünraum oder die Steigerung des privaten PKW-Verkehrs verringert werden. Durch den modularen Aufbau der BONUS-Nachverdichtungsberatung in zwei Beratungsstufen kann individuell auf die Vorstellungen und Wünsche der Eigentümer*innen eingegangen werden. Den Eigentümer*innen bietet sich so die Möglichkeit im Vergleich zum Neubau, beispielsweise Familienmitgliedern eine kostengünstigere Alternative zum Einfamilienhaus zu bieten. Unterstützt werden die Nachverdichtungsberater*innen von unterschiedlichen Beratungswerkzeugen wie einem Fragebogen oder einem Datenblatt mit Informationen zum Grundstück, wie dem potenziellen Nachverdichtungspotenzial. Grundlage dafür bilden eine innovative Datenbasis und innovative GIS-Methoden, die auf andere Gemeinden übertragbar sind und den Berater*innen eine optimale Vorbereitung für die Beratungstermine bieten.

Despite global urbanization, not all cities have increasing populations. While not homogenous, shrinking cities arguably have different opportunities and challenges for green space than growing cities. This article reports a structured content analysis to investigate how urban green space planning evolved in two case study cities: Buffalo (New York, US) and Porto (Portugal). These cities both underwent shrinkage and suburbanization but with very different green space planning histories. The concept of green infrastructure is used as a lens to analyze green space planning change, specifically focused on multifunctionality. The aim of investigating how objectives and priorities for planning green spaces change during a period of urban shrinkage, and particularly what functions these cities have assigned to green space, showed that, over time, green spaces were expected to produce more ecological functions in both cities, and, particularly in Buffalo, contribute to the economic and demographic outcomes of the city. Overall trends in green space planning appear to have played a role but we find shrinking cities may leverage green space to meet unique needs. These findings contribute to the literature by addressing how shrinkage affects not only vacant areas but also overall green space planning, as well as suggesting that general green space planning studies should consider demographic change as a relevant context factor.

Urban forms can have numerous direct and indirect effects on the health of residents. This article focuses on the relationship between health and urban form, in particular the role of green open spaces. The goal is to identify criteria for evaluating the impact of physical forms such as streets and open spaces, green infrastructure, and built structures on urban health. These criteria are then used to identify paths for the redevelopment of modernist housing estates with the aim of improving living conditions. This challenge remains particularly significant in Poland and Eastern Europe, where a large share of the urban population lives in modernist blocks of flats. First, we examine the modernist housing concept in Europe and Poland and the guiding principles for their development, including the role of green, open spaces. Then, we refer to several studies on urban health to identify normative factors that define the open space design conditions in modernist housing estates. We apply the typo-morphological approach with qualitative and quantitative assessment of building forms and forms of green open spaces to examine the structures of two modernist housing estates in Poland: Lodz and Gdansk. We evaluate their living conditions, especially the organisation of outdoor space, in terms of their impact on the health of residents. A comparison of the two housing estates reveals common factors defining the relationship between urban form and health.

In Planungsprozessen werden Fragestellungen hoher Komplexität und Konfliktträchtigkeit verhandelt. Eine Vielzahl von Akteuren entwickelt unterschiedliche Bedarfe hinsichtlich räumlicher Entwicklungen, die in Planungsprozessen in Einklang gebracht werden müssen. Ziel des Beitrags ist es aufzuzeigen, inwiefern bilanzierende Ökosystemdienstleistungsanalysen im Rahmen von Partizipationsprozessen und informellen Planungsinstrumenten eingesetzt werden können. Bei der Bilanzierung werden sowohl die Leistungen von Ökosystemen (Angebot) als auch ihre Bewertung durch verschiedene Interessengruppen (Nachfrage) berücksichtigt. Anhand eines Forschungsprojekts zur Bewertung und Wahrnehmung von Grün- und Freiflächen in der Region Rhein-Neckar werden in diesem Beitrag Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der bilanzierenden Ökosystemdienstleistungsanalysen für partizipative Planungsprozesse aufgezeigt. Anhand der Projekterkenntnisse reflektieren wir die bei der Durchführung, Umsetzung und Kommunikation aufgetretenen Herausforderungen. Wir erörtern, inwiefern und im Rahmen welcher Planungsschritte die Methode als informelles Werkzeug in Beteiligungsprozessen genutzt werden kann. Wir argumentieren, dass bilanzierende Ökosystemdienstleistungsanalysen eine fundierte und multidimensionale Kommunikationsbasis darstellen können, um zur Versachlichung von Wahrnehmungs- und Bewertungsunterschieden in planerischen Diskussions- und Aushandlungsprozessen beizutragen. In planning processes, issues of high complexity and conflicts are negotiated. Perceptions and requirements of different actors need to be reconciled in planning processes. To negotiate these different perceptions and requirements, public participation is obligatory in planning processes. However, as participation still faces many challenges with regard to acceptance and understanding of determining factors, there is a need for further participation procedures. This paper aims to show to what extent ecosystem service analysis can be used in the context of participation processes and informal planning instruments for transdisciplinary communication. By budgeting, both ecosystem services supply and the demands of different stakeholder groups from for example spatial planning and civil society are taken into account. Based on a completed research project on the valuation of green and open spaces in the Rhine-Neckar region - in which ecosystem service analysis has been applied - this paper highlights opportunities and limitations of a relational budgeting ecosystem service analysis. We reflect on the obstacles and challenges encountered during application and implementation. Based on this, we argue that relational budgeting ecosystem service analysis can provide a sound and multidimensional basis for communication that can contribute to the objectification of differences in perception and valuation in discussion and negotiation processes in planning.

Es gehört zu den bisher eher weniger untersuchten Fragen, wie und warum politisch- planerische Entscheidungen zuweilen auch aktiv zugunsten des Schutzes und der Entwicklung von Freiräumen getroffen werden. Der vorliegende Beitrag betrachtet diese Frage erstmals aus der Perspektive des etablierten politikwissenschaftlichen Multiple-Streams-Ansatzes von John W. Kingdon in Bezug auf die regionale Freiflächenpolitik. In einer ersten Annäherung wird der Ansatz vorgestellt; die Illustration kann anhand der umfangreichen Darstellung der Entstehung und Entwicklung des Regionalparks Rhein- Main des ehemaligen leitenden Planers Lorenz Rautenstrauch erfolgen. Dies deutet auf eine Eignung des Ansatzes für die Analyse der regionalen Freiraumpolitik hin. Der Erfolg von Freirauminitiativen hängt dem Multiple-Streams-Ansatz nach vom Zusammenkommen von drei eigendynamischen Strömen ab, die sich vereinfacht als relativ starker Problemdruck, attraktive Handlungsoption und günstige Neigung der Entscheidungsträger charakterisieren lassen. Es bietet sich aus der Sicht der Wissenschaft an, die Potenziale und Grenzen des Ansatzes durch empirische Studien weiter auszuloten. Aus der Sicht des Freiraumschutzes sind zwei Schlussfolgerungen zu ziehen. Einerseits ist es dem Multiple-Streams-Ansatz folgend prinzipiell denkbar, dass - trotz großer Bemühungen - eine nachhaltige Freiraumpolitik unverwirklicht bleibt, wenn im Zeitverlauf die drei Ströme nicht zusammenfinden. Andererseits bietet der Multiple-Streams-Ansatz Orientierungspunkte für die Gestaltung von notwendigerweise komplexen Strategien.

High-rise housing complexes (HRHCs) are a prominent trend in urban development. They generate new configurations of open green spaces, thus creating a new set of human-environment relations and a new constellation of urban landscapes. However, little attention has been devoted by the literature to these new spatial configurations and the urban experience they offer. Focusing on the spaces between buildings, this research article examines the urban morphology of these large urban developments and how they are being experienced by residents. Based on morphological analysis, we propose a set of outputs with which to discern and evaluate various characteristics of these new spaces. Namely, a typology of HRHCs complexes, three evaluation indexes, and a green/gray nolli map. Drawing on morphological analysis, the research discusses the role of green spaces of HRHCs in the experience of residents. We portray different tensions arising from the residents’ experience based on walking interviews and propose how these tensions are connected to the morphology of space. Juxtaposing the morphological and qualitative topological analyses, we focus on the way that different planning aspects of HRHCs’ open spaces might foster everyday use and function as well as attitudes and feelings.