Quality of time spent matters!

The paper discusses an innovative approach towards addressing and measuring quality of living environments. It introduces the model which talks about quality of living environments via quality of time spent in user’s daily routine. It examines relationships between characteristic profiles, their activities and the environments they are involved in, analysing three key parameters: time balance, financial balance and time-quality balance. Time balance shows how comfortable the time is offered to the user by his/her living environments. Economic balance is a category which represents user’s incomes and expenses for necessary and optional activities. It represents a financial frame within which the user is flexible to be able to perform its activity in a certain environment. Time-quality balance is the final measure of quality provided with the proposed model. It classifies time spent regarding the activity and the environment in which the activity is taking place as well or badly spent time. Time-quality is expressed by time-quality coefficient KTQ. The model shows whether a segment of population can live in certain area and how comfortable

Practical Value of User‐Centred Spatial Statistics for Responsive Urban Planning

This chapter addresses spatial statistics via an alternative perspective, focusing on evidence‐based people‐spatial relationships and related measures, quantifications and qualifications, and by this, it provides rather specific spatial information and spatial statistics about urban environments. It is based on time quality assessment (TQA), a time‐people‐place‐oriented approach for the analysis and simulation of the quality of living environments, backgrounded with the method of behaviour mapping. It shows that the quality of the time spent on a certain activity in a certain place indicates the quality of the living environment. It also shows that the quality of the time spent depends on what a person can afford, and it provides an evaluation of the quality of living environments with a measure of good/bad time. The practical value is in the provision of empirical knowledge to support planning guidance based on user‐centred small‐scale spatial statistics, which is able to inform top‐down and bottom‐up decision‐making processes for people‐friendly living environments

The Possibility of Including Habitat Types as Nature-Based Solutions in Spatial Planning Documents: the Case of Slovenia

There are many forms of NBS for contemporary urban challenges that reflect individual elements or facilities in urban space, but a systematic and comprehensive implementation of NBS in urban planning documents has not yet been observed. In this paper, we use unaltered native habitat types (HTs) as innovative forms of NBS that originate from the natural or semi-natural environments of the same region as the targeted urban environment, which is the subject of urban planning. We draw on a planning approach that attributes added value (a function in addressing urban challenges such as air pollution, noise, stormwater management, and urban heat island) to HT, thus linking the concepts of NBS and HT in an innovative way to integrate them into urban planning. Based on a qualitative content analysis of spatial planning documents in the case of Slovenia, the paper presents a proposal for the inclusion of HTs as NBS in spatial planning documents at national, regional, and local levels. It was found that strategic spatial planning documents are suitable for defining the concept of NBS as a way of addressing urban challenges, while key to integrating HT as NBS into existing spatial planning practice are the spatial implementing document sat national and municipal levels, as well as the Urban Development Concept as a mandatory technical basic document for these acts

Microclimate-Related Human Comfort as Aspect in Urban Planning: Indication of NBS Interventions to Increase Quality of Cycling Networks

Climate change and environmental challenges affecting cities encourage them to reduce negative impacts of environmental challenges on human comfort and respond with sustainable spatial solutions such as Nature-based solutions (NBS). While spatial analyses are often limited in analysing dynamics between space–environmental characteristics and human comfort, there is a challenge to exploit new technologies (ICT) as the potential for the development of more inclusive analyses and monitoring. This paper reflects on one particular portable device for a simultaneous dynamic microclimatic data gathering, and by a protocol for microclimate street assessment evaluates microclimate-related comfort of cycling lanes in Ljubljana, Slovenia. By identifying correlations between spatial elements and microclimate conditions in different spatial settings, the study defines cycling lane sections of various levels of comfortability. The results suggest that ICT innovations for in-situ measurements can help urban analytics to gather and urban planners to interpret detailed microclimate-related information and can help to assess places according to microclimate issues such as high temperature, poor air quality, incrised humidity, but also disturbing noise levels. Collected data are interpreted within human comfort zones and can be linked with rates/levels of comfort. Thus, the paper contributes to urban planning by the provision of fine-grain localised data, with precise data spatial and temporal resolution. As the gathered data is geopositioned, it can be presented on a map enabling a linkage of environmental conditions within a spatial context

Social behaviour as a basis for design and development of green infrastructure

This paper addresses urban open spaces, their uses and users. It is concerned with spatial relationships between usage and the physical structure of open spaces in city centres, and addresses the social dimension of green infrastructures in cities and towns. On the basis of behaviour mapping, it reveals dynamic patterns of place occupancies as informative knowledge for responsive and inclusive design. The paper discusses the uses mapped in parks in two European cities (Ljubljana, Slovenia; Edinburgh, UK) under repeated observation on different days, at different times and under different weather conditions. It shows that occupancy patterns have some spatial logic and that in development, planning and design it is essential to pay more attention to the spatiality of uses, compatibility of uses in places, and comprehensive usage-spatial relationships to produce well used and people-friendly places. The paper is concerned with the practical aspects of the conduciveness of places to use and public responsiveness, and examines how different kinds of spatial structure facilitate use by different publics in different ways; and the extent to which such knowledge and awareness can inform design and decision-making

Development of a user-centered module: A contribution to flood-sustainable spatial planning

This article addresses user-related issues in flood-sustainable spatial planning. It presents the concept and methodological development of a user-centred module, one of three modules of a model for an integral system of flood-sustainable planning. By introducing daily routine analysis of a selected user profile, backgrounded by behaviour mapping, it addresses small but important data in the context of what is usually big-data analysis of flood modelling in order to bring the dynamics of everyday life into flood-sustainable planning. This user-centred module was developed and tested in the Planina Karst Field, a typical overflow karst field that is frequently flooded. It is a novel approach to addressing people’s lives and their interactions with space that opens new perspectives on flood-related issues and can act as an alternative or complement to spatial-planning measures and processes

Razvoj uporabniškega modula: prispevek k poplavno vzdržnemu prostorskemu načrtovanju

Članek v kontekstu trajnostnega poplavno vzdržnega prostorskega načrtovanja obravnava vlogo in pomen poznavanja vprašanj, povezanih z uporabniki prostora. Predstavlja koncept in metodološki razvoj tako imenovanega uporabniškega modula, enega od treh modulov modela celovitega sistema poplavno vzdržnega prostorskega načrtovanja. Na podlagi analiz dnevnih rutin izbranega uporabniškega profila, ki temeljijo na metodi vedenjskih zemljevidov, v kontekstu analiz modeliranja visokih voda obravnava drobne, a pomembne, podatke. S tem umešča poznavanje dinamike vsakdanjega življenja v poplavno modeliranje in poplavno vzdržno načrtovanje, ki pa običajno temelji na masovnih podatkih. Tako osnovan uporabniški modul je bil preizkušan in proučevan na testnem pilotnem območju, Planinskem polju. To je tipično kraško prelivno polje, ki je pogosto poplavljeno. Prispevek prinaša nov pristop, ki temelji na poznavanju delovanja uporabnika v prostoru in odpira nove vidike poplavno vzdržnega ali varnega prostorskega načrtovanja

A frame of understanding to better link nature-based solutions and urban planning

Reinforcement of the concept of nature-based solutions in urban environments calls for their better introduction and linkage into urban planning. The paper is focused on the relationship between nature-based solutions and spatial realities, based on reciprocity among natural processes and urban patterns, emphasising the recognition of using and mimicking natural processes in urban environments. A classification framework as a form of knowledge aggregation is suggested. A matrix that simultaneously addresses the role of natural processes in nature-based solutions and the ability of such processes to deliver results for improving urban environments is proposed. Accordingly, there are three characteristic groups of solutions suggested, (1) those only using natural processes, (2) those using and mimicking natural processes and (3) those only mimicking natural processes, which implementation potentials are commented against four different types of urban patterns, to show what group of the nature-based solutions may best suit any type of spatial agglomeration. Beside green infrastructure as currently the most often addressed manifestation of nature-based solutions in cities, the paper reflects also on the physical processes as inevitable parts of nature. In relation to urban planning, sites and their characteristics are seen as a crucial aspect of nature-based solutions. The arguments are built upon exhaustive literature and case studies review, resulted in the matrix showing the matching relations among nature-based solutions and societal challenges aiming for better urban environment. Additionally, there are also sets of recommendations for bridging the policy-implementation gaps to bring nature-based solutions closer to urban planning, suggested

Defining Natural Habitat Types as Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Planning

This study focuses on solving urban challenges, such as temperature reduction, urban stormwater management, noise reduction, air quality improvement, and CO2 concentration reduction, and suggests terrestrial and freshwater habitat types (HTs) found in Europe as innovative forms of nature-based solutions (NBSs). Establishing native HTs in various urban environments to solve urban challenges would enhance biodiversity at different levels and integrate this aspect into urban planning. This contribution builds on the recognition that vegetated surfaces are the most versatile NBS for addressing the broadest range of environmental problems in urban areas and on the understanding that the processes running within these green spaces offer the key to socio-ecological improvements of such areas. Employing a narrative literature review, qualitative content analysis, and interdisciplinary expert discussion, this paper defines why and how unaltered native HTs can be implemented as NBSs in the urban environment, indicates potential HTs for specific urban challenges, and presents an approach to the inclusion of HTs as NBSs in spatial planning documents at national, regional, and local levels. The proposed planning approach attributes added value to HTs and, by linking the concepts of NBSs and HTs, integrates them into urban planning