Urban green infrastructure in Leipzig : ecosystem services, user’s visions and the influence of green, spatial and grey characteristics. Implications for a resilient development

Urbane grüne Infrastruktur (UGI) ist von zentraler Bedeutung für resiliente Städte, da sie essentielle Ökosystemleistungen (ÖSL) bereitstellt. Neben ÖSL kann UGI auch negative Effekte (disservices) erzeugen. Die Nutzung von ÖSL und disservices hängt dabei von persönlichen Präferenzen der Nutzer*innen und dem UGI-Design ab. Diese Dissertation erfasst die tatsächliche Nutzung von ÖSL sowie die Wahrnehmung von disservices durch UGI-Nutzer*innen in Leipzig, Deutschland und wie diese durch spezifische UGI-Merkmale beeinflusst werden. Außerdem zeige ich Diskrepanzen zwischen den Vorstellungen der Bürger*innen bezüglich der zukünftigen UGI-Entwicklung und lokalen Planungsschwerpunkten. Basierend auf den zentralen Ergebnissen der Arbeit formuliere ich Gestaltungsprinzipien für die UGI-Planung: Mehr Vielfalt von UGI und Baumbestand, Integration von städtischer Wildnis, Verbesserung der grauen Infrastruktur und sozioökonomischer Aspekte und Beteiligung der Bürger*innen an Planung und Pflege.With regard to increasing inhabitant numbers in cities, urban green infrastructure (UGI) providing essential ecosystem services (ES) becomes a key solution for designing resilient cities. Besides ES, UGI can co-create disservices/disturbances. The flow of ES and disservices depends on different personal preferences as well as the UGI design. This dissertation aims to highlight ES flow, benefit, and disservice perception of UGI visitors in Leipzig, Germany, and how this is influenced by specific UGI characteristics. Furthermore, I highlight mismatches between citizens’ ideas for future UGI development and local planning foci. Based on central findings from the assessment, I formulate implications for UGI planning: increasing the diversity of UGI and tree cover, integrating urban wilderness, enhancing grey infrastructure and socio-economic aspects, and facilitating citizens’ participation in management and maintenance of UGI

Zoning of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves: A Comprehensive Set of Geodata for Europe

Peer Reviewe

Ecosystem Service Use and the Motivations for Use in Central Parks in Three European Cities

The majority of Europeans live in cities, where parks as components of Urban Green Spaces (UGSs) play an important role in well-being and the provision of ecosystem services (ES). UGSs are especially relevant for the implementation of the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals “Good health and wellbeing” (Goal 3) and “Sustainable cities and communities” (Goal 11). This study focused on ES use and users’ motives, which were surveyed during visits at central parks in the cities Leipzig, Coimbra and Vilnius. Park visitors used 17 different ES, dominated by physical interactions such as walking or biking, followed by experiential and aesthetical ES and ES linked to social relations. Age of visitors, cultural setting and distance to homes influenced ES use in the parks differently in each city, limiting the transferability of park-user behavior or motivations across different spatial and cultural contexts. Results also indicate that aligning sustainability objectives and usability, good accessibility of urban parks plays a central role and encourages the use of non-motorized or public transport for park visits. Concrete information about UGS user motivation and behaviour generated in this and similar studies contributes to convert the UN Agenda 2030 strategies at the municipal level into sustainability and user-oriented design and management of UGS

Reinforcing nature-based solutions through tools providing social-ecological-technological integration

While held to be a means for climate change adaptation and mitigation, nature-based solutions (NbS) themselves are vulnerable to climate change. To find ways of compensating for this vulnerability we combine a focused literature review on how information technology has been used to strengthen positive social-ecological-technological feedback, with the development of a prototype decision-support tool. Guided by the literature review, the tool integrates recent advances in using globally available remote sensing data to elicit information on functional diversity and ecosystem service provisioning with information on human service demand and population vulnerability. When combined, these variables can inform climate change adaptation strategies grounded in local social-ecological realities. This type of integrated monitoring and packaging information to be actionable have potential to support NbS management and local knowledge building for context-tailored solutions to societal challenges in urban environments.Peer reviewe

Assumptions in ecosystem service assessments: Increasing transparency for conservation

Conservation efforts are increasingly supported by ecosystem service assessments. These assessments depend on complex multi-disciplinary methods, and rely on a number of assumptions which reduce complexity. If assumptions are ambiguous or inadequate, misconceptions and misinterpretations may arise when interpreting results of assessments. An interdisciplinary understanding of assumptions in ecosystem service science is needed to provide consistent conservation recommendations. Here, we synthesise and elaborate on 12 prevalent types of assumptions in ecosystem service assessments. These comprise conceptual and ethical foundations of the ecosystem service concept, assumptions on data collection, indication, mapping, and modelling, on socio-economic valuation and value aggregation, as well as about using assessment results for decision-making. We recommend future assessments to increase transparency about assumptions, and to test and validate them and their potential consequences on assessment reliability. This will support the taking up of assessment results in conservation science, policy and practice.Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft (DE)BiodiversaBundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347Peer Reviewe

Keep It Real: Selecting Realistic Sets of Urban Green Space Indicators

With increasing urbanisation, urban green spaces are expected to be crucial for urban resilience and sustainability, through the delivery of ecological, economic and social benefits. In practice, however, planning, management and evaluation of urban green spaces are rarely structured and evidence-based. This represents a missed opportunity to account for, track and foster the multiple benefits that green spaces are expected to deliver. To gain insight into this gap, this study assesses the availability and uptake of relevant evidence by city governments. Interviews, focus groups and quantitative surveys were applied in four medium-sized European cities: Coimbra (Portugal), Genk (Belgium), Leipzig (Germany), and Vilnius (Lithuania), covering the main governance and climatic gradients in Europe. Using straightforward data exploration and regression, we analyse which ecological, economic and social indicators are typically chosen by cities and why. Together with the city stakeholders, we derived a common set of benefit categories and key performance indicators which can be adapted to diverse local contexts. We conclude that cities tend to make pragmatic decisions when composing their indicator sets, but nevertheless cover multiple urban green space dimensions. Finally, we explore how indicator choice could be optimised towards a complementary and credible indicator set, taking into account a realistically feasible monitoring effort undertaken by the cities

What do people value in urban green spaces? Linking spatial characteristics to users’ perceptions of nature benefits and disturbances

The objective of this research is to present positive (benefits) as well as negative aspects (disturbances) of UGS that people perceive and how perceptions differ across peoples’ age and UGS with specific site characteristics. We surveyed more than 1700 users of 18 urban parks and 18 brownfields in Leipzig, Germany