Stadslandskapets obrukade resurs: om gr\uf6nstrukturens potential och synligg\uf6rande i en h\ue5llbar stadsutveckling

Contemporary urban landscape is characterised by disintegration and spreading out which are caused by the transport culture. Green areas are both being created, fragmented and used for other purposes. Sustainable development is the most important political challenge today which calls for an identification of the physical and functional challenges for urban design and planning. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how the multifunctional character of green areas can be understood and integrated in urban design and planning supporting sustainable development. Green structure, understood as water and all areas which are neither covered nor sealed, has a multifunctional meaning in urban development. Different parts of the green structure have composing potential in the urban landscape. Thus, green structure is an important tool for urban development. In order to make use of the green structure in a sustainable development it is necessary to integrate it in urban design and planning. By the help of a case study, historical examples and four contemporary theories on urban development this dissertation investigates the development of the concept green structure, definition and handling of green structure and possible ways to integrate the green structure. Two previous pilot studies have illuminated the difference between formal green structure, all areas that are green in maps and plans, and actual green structure, all areas that correspond to the definition of green structure. The urban design and planning tends to handle the formal green structure which means that about 60% of the actual green structure never becomes visible in the planning documents. With these problems as a point of departure a case study was executed in the north east of G\uf6teborg. Through studies of documents and interviews the development and handle of the greenery within urban design and planning was investigated. The urban design and planning is not capable of handling green structure in a way relevant to changes in the urban landscape. The planning system doesn\u27t aim at the contemporary landscape and the result is that the total amount of green areas neither are seen nor used in urban design and planning. The historical examples show that the integration of greenery implies that it is treated as an element in urban development. The four contemporary theories indicate that the integration of greenery implies a new understanding of green structure considering the scales and tendencies in the landscape

Biodiversity in urban governance and planning : Examples from Swedish cities

One of the key agreements adopted at the Rio Conference in 1992 was the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Both in practice and research biodiversity has been mainly addressed in a non-urban context, often discussed in relation to issues such as the depletion of rainforests and desertification. However, as more than half of the world population are urban dwellers, it is increasingly urgent to discuss the application of the concept of biodiversity within an urban context. Issues approached in this article are: What does it mean to talk about biodiversity in an urban context? Is biodiversity a meaningful goal for urban politics and planning? Is there empirical evidence of implementing biodiversity in urban politics and planning. After an introduction, the article is organized into four sections. In the second section the concept of biological diversity is defined with special reference to its application in an urban context. Biodiversity and its relationship to urban governance is the topic of the third section, followed by a section analysing examples of how this relationship is practised in selected Swedish cities. The final section highlights five major conclusions with regard to the application of biodiversity in an urban context: (1) that all cities studied have adopted overall 'green' policies, including biodiversity as one component; (2) that local coalitions in favour of implementing biodiversity have been established between employees at different offices, between employees and politicians, and between employees and NGOs; (3) that there are in all cases tangible signs of spatial patterns and structures that are favourable to biodiversity; (4) that urban biodiversity, for its successful implementation, needs to be related, and accommodated to other values given priority in current policymaking, such as recreation; (5) that mainstream biodiversity analysis should be complemented by an urban landscape approach. Finally, the article returns to the more general question of what biodiversity could and should mean in urban planning

Gr\uf6nstrukturens synligg\uf6rande; en f\uf6ruts\ue4ttning f\uf6r integration av kunskaper om gr\uf6nstrukturen i stadsplaneringen

This is the final report from the project ”Green Structure in urban design and planning” within the research programme ”Sustainable urban development and Urban Structures” (SUUS). The green structure is vital to a sustainable urban development. It constitutes a large part of the urban landscape and it plays important roles in relation to the cultural, social and technical urban structures. Further, the urban dwellers are engaged in the outdoor environment in a concrete and emotional way, which can be seen a potential for engagement supporting local participation in the planning processes. Finally, urban greenery constitutes an important link between urban dwellers and the nature, a link, which is often very vague, as our fundamental need for the ecosystem has become abstract and almost invisible to us. Thus, it is very relevant to state that urban development and planning should be characterized by competent strategies in order to safeguard the green resources. However, the lack of such strategies is an important point of departure for this project. The searching for ways to understand and methods to integrate green structure-knowledge into urban planning aiming at sustainable urban development is thus a main objective here.The research problem is the lack of methods to express and maintain the qualitative significance of green structure in relation to urban design and planning. Following this, the main focus for this project is the critical discussion of challenges and possibilities of the green structure planning, reflecting the issue’s complexity and the need to find localized and situation-adapted strategies. Thus, the research objectives are:– How does contemporary green planning work?– In what ways can knowledge about the multifunctional potential of greenstructure be visualised and useful in local situations?– In what ways can geographical information systems (GIS) be used to createefficient tools supporting communication about this multifunctional potential?The main conclusion is that the lack of strategies for the safeguard and maintaining of green resources is related to the inability of physical planning to visualize and make use of green qualities at different planning levels and in different contexts. Visualisation is thus a key to the realisation of such strategies. This project has dealt with five aspects of the visualisation and utilization of green qualities, here formulated as challenges to urban design and planning: (1) to open up for new levels in physical planning, (2) to see the green structure as a whole, no matter the ownership, (3) to avoid getting caught in sector division but to connect different urban planning issues in planning across sectors, (4) to take care of experience-based knowledge from different actors, and (5) to pay attention to the cultural aspects affecting people’s use of the green structure.Keywords: green structure, sustainable urban development, urban design and planning, green structure planning