Chapter 4 Introduction to Section 1

This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific;Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental;to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection;between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence;of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global;climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated;and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences,;this edited collection brings attention to place-;based;approaches across the Pacific Rim and;makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable;urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine;sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and;analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-;landscape;development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity,;energy, water, health, and planning and engagement.;This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in;research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban;studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers,;professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting;those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);of the United Nations. The;collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars;through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL);Program and its global network,;facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors;from more than 30 institutions

Chapter 4 Introduction to Section 1

This handbook addresses a growing list of challenges faced by regions and cities in the Pacific;Rim, drawing connections around the what, why, and how questions that are fundamental;to sustainable development policies and planning practices. These include the connection;between cities and surrounding landscapes, across different boundaries and scales; the persistence;of environmental and development inequities; and the growing impacts of global;climate change, including how physical conditions and social implications are being anticipated;and addressed. Building upon localized knowledge and contextualized experiences,;this edited collection brings attention to place-;based;approaches across the Pacific Rim and;makes an important contribution to the scholarly and practical understanding of sustainable;urban development models that have mostly emerged out of the Western experiences. Nine;sections, each grounded in research, dialogue, and collaboration with practical examples and;analysis, focus on a theme or dimension that carries critical impacts on a holistic vision of city-;landscape;development, such as resilient communities, ecosystem services and biodiversity,;energy, water, health, and planning and engagement.;This international edited collection will appeal to academics and students engaged in;research involving landscape architecture, architecture, planning, public policy, law, urban;studies, geography, environmental science, and area studies. It also informs policy makers,;professionals, and advocates of actionable knowledge and adoptable ideas by connecting;those issues with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);of the United Nations. The;collection of writings presented in this book speaks to multiyear collaboration of scholars;through the APRU Sustainable Cities and Landscapes (SCL);Program and its global network,;facilitated by SCL Annual Conferences and involving more than 100 contributors;from more than 30 institutions

Resilient Greenway: A Participatory Planning Framework

Greenway as a network of “nature’s super infrastructure”—as part of green infrastructure that includes both man-made and natural ecological networks— providing ecological, recreational, and cultural values (Fabos, 1995) is a complex and dynamic social-ecological system. The structures and functions of greenways are shaped and formed by the interactions between natural and human systems. Under climate change impacts with intensified and more frequent extreme weathers, many greenway systems that are particularly in already natural disaster-prone areas would be likely to experience more aggravated social and ecological impacts. A resilient greenway thus is a greenway system that processes an adaptive capacity to absorb shocks and cope with disturbance to the system while maintaining the essential functioning of the system, and a transformative capacity to allow the system to learn and evolve toward sustainability. Greenway systems pertaining ecosystem services have been identified as a critical instrument for climate change mitigation (e.g., carbon sequestration) and adaptation (e.g., reduce heat and floods, improve air and water quality) (Demuzere et al., 2014). Planning for resilient greenway system under climate change impacts is therefore both a remedy for and a challenge with climate change. The capacity of greenway system for climate change is influenced not only by the biophysical characteristics but also social-cultural and institutional context of the system (Matthews and Byrne, 2015). Ahern (2013) identified ecological principles for biophysical resilience of urban landscapes— biodiversity, ecological connectivity, multifunctionality, modularity, and safeto- fail design—while others included participatory consensus-based decisionmaking process and the understanding of community’s perceptions and behaviours toward greenways as social-institutional components to the success of the greenway planning and design (e.g., Benedict and McMahon, 2006; Ryan and Walker, 2005). This paper draws literature from resilience and participatory action research and proposes a resilient greenway participatory planning framework that is place-based and action-oriented to address both biophysical and socialinstitutional resilience of the greenway systems and apply to an on-going study in Kearny, Arizona, USA

A Sustainability Evaluation and Dynamic Modeling Tool for Landscape and Urban Planning Policy Scenarios

Incorporating sustainability principles into urban development is often complex involving strong interaction between ecosystem components and development goals. As identified in the Brundtland Commissions report (UN, 1987), sustainability has gained much attention in planning aimed at balancing current needs without depleting resources and ecological services available for future generations. While the decision-making process is embedded in a social framework, political sustainability depends on collective decisions and citizens’ preferences related to public policies (Munda, 2006; Webster, 1998). In recent decade, the sustainability concept has been adopted in landscape and urban planning. Specific approaches include assessing abiotic, biotic, and cultural (ABC) resources in the landscapes for goals setting, defining and resolving spatial conflicts, developing and evaluating alternative scenarios, selecting a landscape plan, employing adaptive management, and closing the planning process loop by continuous interdisciplinary and public involvement (Ahern, 1999). There is a need for a simple and effective tool to model interaction among landscape components, to facilitate the decision-making process in the planning framework, and to evaluate alternative scenarios for sustainability. Urban policies are often path-dependent with past decisions having consequences that constrain allocation of resources in later times. In addition, the policies are selfreinforcing (Woodlief, 1998) and interacting with ecosystem services of ABC resources over time. For example, when cities implemented urban renewal policy in the 1940s, hundreds of low-income neighborhood blocks were cleared and thousands of acres of wetlands were filled for building housing and highway systems. The consequences of past decisions as observed today include inequitable distribution affecting low income and minority communities and extensive degradation of the environment. The varying impacts of a policy decision are not only dynamic over time but also involving interplay between the landscape and society. To develop and assess landscape and urban plans with sustainability criteria, there is a critical need for policy evaluation under alternative planning scenarios. Assessment of the state of resources over time can inform planners on shifts in ecosystem conditions in landscapes under a particular planning scenario. This will also enable planners to anticipate changes in the ecosystem health and mitigate negative impacts on resource allocation. Balancing multiple goals, incorporating constraints facing communities, and including public participation are essential for developing effective sustainable plans. A dynamic modelling and participatory approach can inform the public on landscape interactions, the nature of trade-offs between scenarios, and long-term trends in sustainability criteria. For example, modeling could reveal that sustainability may be decreasing over time as one resource is rapidly depleted under a planning scenario and negatively impact on other resources. In order to assess and incorporate trade-off relationships into the planning process with continuous public participation, we propose a dynamic ecosystem and policy evaluation framework for landscape and urban planning

Exploring Stakeholders’ Perceptions of Urban Growth Scenarios for Metropolitan Boston (USA): The Relationship Between Urban Trees and Perceived Density

Achieving multiple goals rather than trading one goal off for another is the essence of sustainability. Visualizing alternative futures in a participatory planning process helps disentangle complex planning issues particularly when stakeholders may perceive key goals as imposing potential tradeoffs, such as increased housing for a growing population and availability of green space. This study explored the effects of using visualization and scenarios as planning tools in a workshop with stakeholders in the Boston Metro Area, Massachusetts (USA), in achieving multiple benefits of sustainable future growth of the region. We applied mixed methods sequential explanatory design and a survey instrument with a landscape preference survey designed to garner stakeholders\u27 preference and acceptability of perceived urban density versus urban greening in four future growth scenarios reflecting multiple goals in sustainability. The results of the landscape preference survey demonstrated that increasing tree canopy appears to ameliorate the low ratings of high-rise buildings for the region\u27s urban development. In addition, the scenario planning process, especially the use of small group discussions, represented an effective tool in facilitating stakeholders\u27 discussion about achieving the multiple benefits of the three goals of sustainability: Environment, Economy, Equity. This study provided theoretical and applied insights for planners in the use of visualization and scenario planning methodologies to engage stakeholders in the participatory planning process. It revealed the potential for a policy decision shift among stakeholders in the Boston region, namely that higher density urban development would likely be more acceptable to them when combined with a simultaneous increase in tree canopy cover. Through practices like these, stakeholders are more likely to consider policies and designs that embrace a variety of goals for their community’s future instead of simplistically placing one goal in opposition to another or trading them off against each other

Effects of Detention for Flooding Mitigation under Climate Change Scenarios— Implication for Landscape Planning in the Charles River Watershed, Massachusetts, USA

Climate change has posed increased risks to environmental hazards (e.g., flooding, droughts, hurricanes) in addition to new challenges under climate change impacts (e.g., early snow melt, sea level rises, heat waves). Floods are omnipresent in almost every city in the United States and account for the most economic losses than any other single geophysical hazard (White and Haas 1975). Previous climate change studies have suggested promising trends of increasing temperature and changing precipitation patterns as well as increased intensity and duration of storm events that are likely to result in more flooding events in the Northeast region. Flooding mitigation strategies have been focusing on structured engineering solutions such as dams and dikes along streams and rivers since the late 1910s. In recent decades, in lieu of conventionally engineered infrastructure, scholars have called for “soft” strategies such as green infrastructure (Thomas and Littlewood 2010) and land use planning (Burby 1998; Godschalk 2004) for comprehensive hazard mitigation and stormwater management integrated into planning and design interventions for flooding mitigation. Stormwater detention is among the most prevalent stormwater management practices for flooding mitigation; however, the perceived benefits could be overestimated without empirical study (Beecham et al. 2005). In addition, planners are now facing challenges to cope with uncertainties from climate change impacts under a paradox between making room for water while managing growth in land use planning. For local planners and stakeholders to make adaptive land use decisions for climate change, this paper aims to answer two key questions: (1) to what degree and in what way does climate change have impacts on long-term flooding hazards? (2) how much detention area in the watershed would be needed for mitigating flooding hazards induced by climate change? And what do the results imply for innovations in landscape planning

Co-designed Land-use Scenarios and their Implications for Storm Runoff and Streamflow in New England

Landscape and climate changes have the potential to create or exacerbate problems with stormwater management, high flows, and flooding. In New England, four plausible land-use scenarios were co-developed with stakeholders to give insight to the effects on ecosystem services of different trajectories of socio-economic connectedness and natural resource innovation. With respect to water, the service of greatest interest to New England stakeholders is the reduction of stormwater and flooding. To assess the effects of these land-use scenarios, we applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to two watersheds under two climates. Differences in land use had minimal effects on the water balance but did affect high flows and the contribution of storm runoff to streamflow. For most scenarios, the effect on high flows was small. For one scenario—envisioned to have global socio-economic connectedness and low levels of natural resource innovation—growth in impervious areas increased the annual maximum daily flow by 10%, similar to the 5–15% increase attributable to climate change. Under modest population growth, land-use decisions have little effect on storm runoff and high flows; however, for the two scenarios characterized by global socio-economic connectedness, differences in choices regarding land use and impervious area have a large impact on the potential for flooding. Results also indicate a potential interaction between climate and land use with a shift to more high flows resulting from heavy rains than from snowmelt. These results can help inform land use and development, especially when combined with assessments of effects on other ecosystem services

What Does It Take to Achieve Equitable Urban Tree Canopy Distribution? A Boston Case Study.

Considerable attention has been paid to the benefits that urban trees provide and recent research has focused on how the distribution of trees in the urban landscape is affected by socioeconomic processes like social stratification, as indicated by associations with income, race, ethnicity, and education. These studies have found marked disparity in urban canopy cover, with primarily low income and minority neighborhoods commonly being underserved. However, few studies have investigated the potential to overcome urban canopy inequities through urban planning and reforestation. This question becomes even more important as many U.S. cities pledge to increase urban canopy cover as part of larger climate change mitigation strategies. Can today’s heavily developed U.S. cities use these tree planting initiatives to increase equity in urban canopy cover while still providing the infrastructure and housing necessary for expected population growth? This case study characterizes the socioeconomic drivers of the current urban canopy cover in Boston, Massachusetts, and further explores the possibility of distributing trees to increase equitable access to environmental justice and ecosystem services, while meeting housing and infrastructure needs. Results suggest that even when tree planting initiatives focus specifically on increasing canopy cover for environmental justice communities, equitable distribution of urban trees is difficult to achieve. Our findings indicate that difficulties arise not only from the expected policy and funding aspects, but also from ecological ones, including the physical availability of tree planting sites in environmental justice communities

Scenario Planning for the Boston Metropolitan Region: Exploring Environmental and Social Implications of Alternative Futures

The Boston Metropolitan Area Urban Long-term Ecological Research Area (BMA-ULTRA-EX) Project is an interdisciplinary project that is studying the effects of socio-economic and biophysical drivers on urban ecosystems. The Boston region is experiencing low-density urban sprawl (suburbanization) on the rural-urban fringes of the metropolitan area that is creating environmental impacts to natural resources. At the same time, central cities such as Boston are seeing disinvestment in some low-income neighborhoods causing property abandonment, along with limited infill development (densification) near the commercial core and transit hubs. These competing socio-economic forces of suburbanization, densification, and disinvestment have environmental implications for urban ecosystems, including urban forest canopy, water quantity and quality, and biodiversity. Landscape planning initiatives to address these issues will require a pro-active approach to concentrating development on currently built lands and in the suburban fringe to protect forests, farms and other natural resources, while greening and enhancing ecosystem services in the current high-density urban core. It is within this landscape planning setting that the research team used a stakeholder- driven process to develop a set of four planning scenarios to explore the future of the region. This paper will describe the planning process with stakeholders to develop these plans, along with the preliminary analyses. It will conclude with insights for other landscape planners engaged in scenario planning

Risk Communication and Climate Justice Planning: A Case of Michigan's Huron River Watershed

Communicating climate risks is crucial when engaging the public to support climate action planning and addressing climate justice. How does evidence-based communication influence local residents’ risk perception and potential behavior change in support of climate planning? Built upon our previous study of Climate Justice maps illustrating high scores of both social and ecological vulnerability in Michigan’s Huron River watershed, USA, a quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of Climate Justice mapping intervention on residents’ perceptions and preparedness for climate change associated hazards in Michigan. Two groups were compared: residents in Climate Justice areas with high social and ecological vulnerability scores in the watershed (n=76) and residents in comparison areas in Michigan (n=69). Measurements for risk perception include perceived exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability to hazards. Results indicate that risk information has a significant effect on perceived sensitivity and level of preparedness for future climate extremes among participants living in Climate Justice areas. Findings highlight the value of integrating scientific risk assessment information in risk communication to align calculated and perceived risks. This study suggests effective risk communication can influence local support of climate action plans and implementation of strategies that address climate justice and achieve social sustainability in local communities