•Human heat stress in a residential district is simulated for different green coverage scenarios.•The impact of trees on human thermal comfort is quantified for a heat wave day.•Green coverage is ...capable of reducing mean radiant temperatures by 43K.•Green coverage is capable of reducing mean physiologically equivalent temperatures by 22K.•The human-biometeorological performance of the ENVI-met model is validated.
The potential of urban green coverage to mitigate human heat stress is studied using the ENVI met model V4. The simulation domain is a residential district in Freiburg, a mid-size city in Southwest Germany. It is characterised by residential buildings and street canyons with asphalt surfaces, grasslands and broad-leaved trees. The ENVI-met model was validated against human-biometeorological measurements and demonstrated good performance when simulating the urban thermal environment in terms of air temperature (Ta) and human heat stress in terms of mean radiant temperature (Tmrt) and physiologically equivalent temperature (PET). Simulations were performed for the heat wave day of 4 August 2003, which is a typical scenario for future summer weather in Central Europe as projected by climate models. Four scenarios with different types of green coverage were simulated. The results enable quantification of the daytime and nocturnal contributions of trees and grasslands, respectively, to the mitigation of human heat stress on different spatial scales. Averaged over 10-16 CET, trees on grasslands lead to a mitigation effect up to 2.7K for Ta, 39.1K for Tmrt and 17.4K for PET. In comparison, the effect of grasslands can be up to 3.4K for Ta, 7.5K for Tmrt and 4.9K for PET. Based on the findings, design implications are also provided from the perspective of urban human-biometeorology.
Literature reviews establish the foundation of academic inquires. However, in the planning field, we lack rigorous systematic reviews. In this article, through a systematic search on the methodology ...of literature review, we categorize a typology of literature reviews, discuss steps in conducting a systematic literature review, and provide suggestions on how to enhance rigor in literature reviews in planning education and research.
•Public participation GIS used to elicit residents’ values for green open space.•Respondents assign a range of values to green open spaces simultaneously.•Values assigned to parks were related ...statistically to landscape characteristics.•Distance from water is important but park management classification less so.•Theoretical, statistical and practical challenges exist when applying PPGIS.
Planning for green space is guided by standards and guidelines but there is currently little understanding of the variety of values people assign to green spaces or their determinants. Land use planners need to know what values are associated with different landscape characteristics and how value elicitation techniques can inform decisions. We designed a Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) study and surveyed residents of four urbanising suburbs in the Lower Hunter region of NSW, Australia. Participants assigned dots on maps to indicate places they associated with a typology of values (specific attributes or functions considered important) and negative qualities related to green spaces. The marker points were digitised and aggregated according to discrete park polygons for statistical analysis. People assigned a variety of values to green spaces (such as aesthetic value or social interaction value), which were related to landscape characteristics. Some variables (e.g. distance to water) were statistically associated with multiple open space values. Distance from place of residence however did not strongly influence value assignment after landscape configuration was accounted for. Value compatibility analysis revealed that some values co-occurred in park polygons more than others (e.g. nature value and health/therapeutic value). Results highlight the potential for PPGIS techniques to inform green space planning through the spatial representation of complex human-nature relationships. However, a number of potential pitfalls and challenges should be addressed. These include the non-random spatial arrangement of landscape features that can skew interpretation of results and the need to communicate clearly about theory that explains observed patterns.
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The online accommodation platform Airbnb has expanded globally, raising substantial planning and regulatory concerns. We ask whether Airbnb rentals generate ...significant neighborhood impacts like noise, congestion, and competition for parking; reduce the permanent rental housing supply and increase rental prices; or provide income opportunities that help "hosts" afford their own housing. We focus on Sydney, the largest region in Australia with 4.4 million people in 28 individual municipalities, which has experienced both rapidly rising housing costs and exponential growth in Airbnb listings since 2011. Airbnb's growth has raised concerns serious enough to result in a formal Parliamentary Inquiry by the state of New South Wales. We analyze stakeholder submissions to this inquiry and review local planning regulations, Airbnb listings data, and housing market and census statistics. We find that online homesharing platforms for visitor accommodations blur traditional boundaries between residential and tourist areas so Airbnb listings may fall outside of existing land use regulations or evade detection until neighbors complain. Our findings are constrained by the difficulties of monitoring online operations and the rapid changes in the industry.
Takeaway for practice: Planners and policymakers in cities with increasing numbers of Airbnb rentals need to review how well local planning controls manage the neighborhood nuisances, traffic, and parking problems that may be associated with them while acting to protect the permanent rental housing supply. Local planners need to ensure that zoning and residential development controls distinguish between different forms of short-term Airbnb accommodation listings and their potential impacts on neighborhoods and housing markets.
•We used social media data to measure patterns of urban park visitation and assess factors influencing use.•Social media-derived estimates were validated as reliable proxy for survey-derived ...visitation.•Water features, amenities, trails, and population density are shown to be important factors for urban park visitation.
Green space and parks in urban environments provide a range of ecosystem services and public benefits. However, planners and park managers can lack tools and resources to gather local information on how parks are used and what makes them desirable places for recreation and a wide variety of uses. Traditional survey methods to monitor park use and user preferences can be costly, time consuming, and challenging to apply at scale. Here, we overcome this limitation by using geotagged social media data to assess patterns of visitation to urban and peri-urban green space across park systems in the metropolitan area of the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA. We find that parks with nearby water features, more amenities, greater accessibility from the presence of trails, and that are located within neighborhoods with higher population density, are associated with higher rates of visitation. As cities grow and shifts in demographics occur, more responsive management of public green space will become increasingly important to ensure urban parks provide ecosystem services and meet users’ needs. Using social media data to rapidly assess park use at a lower cost than traditional surveys has the potential to inform public green space management with targeted information on user behavior and values of urban residents.
Whiteness and Urban Planning Goetz, Edward G.; Williams, Rashad A.; Damiano, Anthony
Journal of the American Planning Association,
04/2020, Letnik:
86, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Problem, research strategy, and findings: The ability of planning to address America's urban problems of inequality, crime, housing, education, and segregation is hampered by a relative neglect of ...Whiteness and its role in shaping urban outcomes. We offer a justification for centering Whiteness within urban planning scholarship and practice that would examine its role shaping and perpetuating regional and racial injustices in the American city. The focus of planners, scholars, and public discourse on the "dysfunctions" of communities of color, notably poverty, high levels of segregation, and isolation, diverts attention from the structural systems that produce and reproduce the advantages of affluent and White neighborhoods. Planners and planning scholars frequently invoke a "legacy of injustice" with regard to concentrated poverty and disadvantage but not in regard to neighborhoods of White affluence. One is segregated and problematized and the other is idealized.
Takeaway for practice: Planners and planning scholars need to understand the role of Whiteness, in particular White affluence, to assess the potential impacts of planning interventions. Doing so will inform a wider range of planning approaches to problems of racial and spatial equity.
•We examine the impact of green infrastructure on perceptions of urban sites.•Photo simulation is used in combination with subjective wellbeing measures.•Green infrastructure increases the happiness ...people associate with urban spaces.•Green infrastructure decreases the stress people associate with urban spaces.•Green infrastructure increases people’s perceptions of the safety of urban spaces.•The magnitude of the impacts increase with the scale of the intervention.
Research using subjective wellbeing (SWB) measures finds that the greener an individual’s local environment is, the higher the levels of happiness and the lower levels of stress they tend to report experiencing. This literature presents positive associations between existing large-scale green spaces, such as urban parks or squares, and the wellbeing of residents living in close proximity to them. In contrast, in the current work, we present a novel approach which combines SWB measures with photo simulation in order to examine the impact of street-level green infrastructure interventions on the people's perceptions of the SWB associated with urban sites. We tested the approach with the attendees of the 20th Biennale on Architecture and Urbanism in Chile in 2017, exploring the impact of four different types of street-level green interventions. The results indicate that all types of green interventions considered significantly increase the perceived happiness and reduce the perceived stress associated with the sites during short exposures, with varying effect sizes across different types and scales of interventions. The proposed technique could be used in urban planning processes to examine the potential SWB benefits of green infrastructure investments prior to their being rolled out.
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