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The main goal of this article is to identify and classify institutional barriers which prevent the use of urban green spaces (UGS) at three levels: availability (whether a UGS ...exists), accessibility (whether it is physically and psychologically accessible, e.g., not fenced off), and attractiveness (whether it is attractive enough for potential users to visit). We reviewed the impacts on UGS provision exerted by different actors (individuals, formal and informal groups, community councils, city authorities, national governmental and non-governmental organizations), along with the relevant institutional foundations of those impacts. As a result, we identified and classified the different barriers for which these actors are responsible in the case of fifteen UGS types in our case study city, Lodz (Łódź) in Poland. The main barriers at different levels concern conflicting interests, physical barriers (private green spaces), and the lack of funds, together with legal and governmental failures (public green spaces). These barriers result from the different actors’ mandates or lack thereof. Our analysis has implications for the operationalization of UGS availability, accessibility and attractiveness, and, in particular, for mapping UGS and setting the relevant indicators and thresholds for UGS availability, accessibility and attractiveness.
This article aims to position postsocialist cities in Central and Eastern Europe in the broader debate on urban environmental justice. The article crosscuts through all three dimensions of justice ...(distributive/distributional, procedural/participatory, and interactional/recognition) in the context of urban green and blue space provision. Environmental justice is still an emerging topic in postsocialist cities, constrained by market-orientation and neoliberal trends within society, privatization, and the primacy of private interests. The respective situation in postsocialist cities provides insights into the international debate on environmental justice, by highlighting some extremes related to neoliberal and populist governments and very rapid processes that lack long-term democratic consensus within societies. The findings of this study are discussed in the context of a postsocialist legacy, which includes broad tolerance for inequalities, a lack of solidarity in society, a lack of responsibility for the public interest, and extreme individualization and disregard for social interests. This has gradually led to the corporatization of local authorities and various business–government coalitions. This setting is more likely to favor business models related to the use and management of urban green and blue spaces than the environmental justice discourse.
•Broad tolerance for inequalities, lack of solidarity in society, lack of responsibility for the public interest•Extreme individualisation and disregard for the social interest•Corporatisation of local authorities and various business–government coalitions•Urban green and blue spaces poorly considered in planning•Justice consideration far from being accepted as guiding principles for urban greening
Although potential urban green space accessibility is being discussed widely, specific barriers that affect accessibility are often under-estimated. They do not equate to limited or uneven ...accessibility nor are they exclusively related to physical settings. Rather, the range of barriers and their complex interactions, including people's perceptions, personal conditions, and institutional frameworks, make this topic less clear cut and difficult to put into practice for planning purposes. Given the importance of barriers when people make decisions, we present a conceptual framework to capture the cumulative and interactive effects of different barriers on realizing recreational benefits of urban green spaces. The framework classifies physical, personal, and institutional barriers and highlights their interactions based on three case studies: Stockholm, Leipzig, and Lodz. We argue that constraints to the accessibility of urban green spaces are not so much the interactions between various physical, personal, and institutional barriers, but more the significance that beneficiaries assign to them as perceived barrier effects. Studying barriers seeks to improve the knowledge about the non-use of urban green spaces and to enable us to draw conclusions about the actual accessibility of recreational benefits. Deduced from the conceptual framework, three pathways are contrasted for improving accessibility to the recreational benefits of urban green spaces: the environment, knowledge, and engagement. We argue that these pathways should not be a diffuse objective, but a sensitive and scale-dependent re-balance of individual, physical, and institutional factors for considering justice in environmental and green space planning and management. Our systematic conceptualization and classification of multidimensional barriers enables a more comprehensive understanding of individuals' decisions in terms of accessing recreational benefits.
Trap stability is essential in luminescence dating and thermochronometry. Trap depth and frequency factors determining the stability of the fast component of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ...in quartz, which is the most important in dating, have yet to be uniquely determined, especially for samples with an OSL signal not dominated by this component. One can determine them in OSL thermal depletion curve (OTDC) experiments. The separation of the fast OSL signal undisturbed by other OSL components is vital for obtaining accurate parameters for the traps of interest. This work presents a method of simultaneous thermal and optical stimulation using red light (620 nm) to separate the fast OSL component (the thermally modulated OSL method-TM-OSL). The OTDC experiment with the TM-OSL stimulation was used for the trap parameter determination on a variety of quartz samples, leading us to report for the first time, the trap parameters for the fast OSL component analytically separated in quartz from rock samples. The results obtained for these samples with the fast component of low intensity are consistent with those with an intensive fast OSL component. Results of OTDC measurements for all investigated quartz samples were tested for a wide range of irradiation doses.
Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of pure analytical potassium chloride (KCl) prepared in two different forms (crystals and pellets) was studied. The occurrence of regeneration effect ...(self-renewal of the OSL signal) in the material was examined. The experiments using the variable delay OSL (VD-OSL) method were carried out. Performed measurements allowed to determine time scale of the phenomenon, as well as quantitative changes of regeneration depending on thermal treatment before and after irradiation. Significant increase of the OSL regeneration was noticeable for pellets after the application of the annealing before irradiation, while for crystals a substantial decrease of regeneration was observed. Preheating applied after irradiation caused that self-renewal of OSL signal was drastically reduced or completely suppressed depending on the form of KCl samples.
•Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) of potassium chloride (KCl) was studied.•The measurements were performed using the variable delay OSL method (VD-OSL).•It was found that regeneration of OSL intensity in KCl could be as high as 2000%.•Annealing caused reduction of OSL renewal for crystals and its increase for pellets.•Preheating after irradiation removed or significantly reduced the OSL regeneration.
The main goal of this article is to propose a set of 20 indicators that represent barriers which prevent urban green space (UGS) provision on three levels – availability, accessibility, and ...attractiveness. These barriers include new investments, such as residential areas and roads; a lack of local zoning plans; fences and entrance fees; a lack of amenities, facilities and entrances; noise; particulates. To test our set of indicators, we investigated 115 parks and green squares in Lodz (Łódź), the third-largest city in Poland. We focused on parks as key examples of UGS, as they are the best explored and most recognizable spaces in most cities. We derived data for our analysis from thematic, publicly available maps and databases, and additional data were provided by managers of UGS. Moreover, we present the procedure of data processing and creating indicators by using the QGIS 2.18 software. Our analysis shows that very small parks in the city center are mostly fenced, lack park infrastructure, leisure facilities, and blue infrastructure, and people are exposed to different nuisances (noise, air pollution). In turn, parks with the lowest number of barriers are typically large and not in the city center. If compared with the spatial distribution of different groups of inhabitants and their socio-economic status, our results would show the actual availability, accessibility, and attractiveness. Our set of indicators is meant to facilitate further discussions with the different stakeholders, planners in particular, in order to remove barriers (at least partly) and increase the overall availability, accessibility, and attractiveness of UGS. Other indicators (based on those used in our article) can be constructed for the needs of other cities, but researchers should take into account data availability, the local context, institutional conditions, and UGS specificities. Besides, each case requires proper interpretation and individual consideration.
•Every park has barriers limiting its availability, accessibility and attractiveness.•Very small parks are characterized by higher intensity of barriers than big parks.•The highest intensity of barriers was noted in the center and on the outskirts of the city.•Comparing our results with the spatial distribution of city residents we will reveal a full view of UGS provision.•The utility of the proposed system of indicators depends on the availability of the underlying data.
Territorial conflicts related to the use of urban green spaces typically result from conflicting preferences and institutions not being able to account for the equitable distribution of benefits. Our ...study focuses on the value conflicts and contestations around using an urban green space as a “social good” and the political processes of defining what makes it “good.” It investigates the institutional setting and the preferences of 415 forest users in a series of entertainment events organized in a large municipal forest (Lagiewniki) in Lodz, Poland. The low socio-economic status group benefited at the cost of the high socio-economic group, whose members typically chose to change their routes in the forest to avoid the nuisance related to these events. The fact that the lower socio-economic status group benefited seems to have been an unplanned side effect of leasing the deteriorating site (to reduce municipal costs) to a company that chose to pick a low-hanging fruit and not invest in developing the site but only cater to the less picky clientele. The local authorities responsible for leasing the site turned a blind eye to the various nuisances caused by these events and disregarded local conservation provisions. We put this case in the context of the “lumpengeography of capital” (Walker, 1978), which suggests that due to the relative scarcity of capital and the abundance of green spaces, some areas remain in a stage of disinvestment, perhaps only temporarily awaiting the next wave of capitalist redevelopment.
With this paper, we enrich the environmental justice debate by investigating differences in the provision of parks in Lodz, Poland, at three levels: availability, accessibility, and attractiveness. A ...park is ‘available’ when it exists within a suitable distance from where we live; it is ‘accessible’ when we feel that we are welcome there, and we can freely reach and safely use this park; it is ‘attractive’ when we willingly want to use it and spend time there. Our research hypothesis is that the most vulnerable groups of inhabitants concentrate around parks whose provision is affected by the largest number of barriers at each of the three levels, while the least vulnerable benefit from the vicinity of parks that are the least affected. Apart from the statistical analysis – the correlation between the indicators that represent the three levels of park provision and those that represent the most and least economically vulnerable using Pearson’s coefficient – we scrutinize three case study parks. The results confirm that there are inequalities at the level of attractiveness for the most vulnerable groups; meanwhile, no statistically significant results were recorded for the least vulnerable groups. The differences would probably be more explicit had socioeconomic segregation been higher in Lodz. The results may also be influenced by the unique postsocialist and postindustrial legacy of our city. The ongoing revitalization of the city center and the increased activity of developers may exclude the most vulnerable inhabitants and deepen segregation.
•Proposed research framework incorporates three dimensions of green space provision.•Some inequalities found for the most vulnerable groups, seniors and the elderly.•No statistically significant results recorded for the least vulnerable groups.•Results affected by chaotic spatial planning and postsocialist legacy of our city.•Policies preventing inequalities should address all three levels of park provision.
The complex kinetics of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) in certain salts is associated with the effect of regeneration (RE). Until now, the RE effect was found in sodium and potassium ...chlorides (NaCl, KCl). The model of OSL kinetics explaining regeneration and fading was previously proposed in pure NaCl. However, it can be referred also to other materials. Verification of the model was performed based on the experimental results obtained for halite (rock salt mineral) and pure KCl crystals. Determination of the characteristic lifetimes of regeneration and fading was performed by adjusting the model solutions for a special case (without stimulation) to the data obtained from the VD-OSL method. In the case when stimulation is on during OSL readout, differential equations describing the model have no analytical solution. Therefore in order to model OSL decays the numerical simulations for various parameters were carried out. The obtained theoretical OSL decays are compatible with the measurement data.
•The OSL model explaining the regeneration effect and fading was considered.•Verification of the model based on experimental data for KCl and halite was made.•Characteristic lifetimes of regeneration and fading processes were determined.•The model was used for the interpretation of the OSL decays.
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