TY - JOUR
T1 - Advancing urban green infrastructure in Europe
T2 - Outcomes and reflections from the GREEN SURGE project
AU - Pauleit, Stephan
AU - Ambrose-Oji, Bianca
AU - Andersson, Erik
AU - Anton, Barbara
AU - Buijs, Arjen
AU - Haase, Dagmar
AU - Elands, Birgit
AU - Hansen, Rieke
AU - Kowarik, Ingo
AU - Kronenberg, Jakub
AU - Mattijssen, Thomas
AU - Stahl Olafsson, Anton
AU - Rall, Emily
AU - van der Jagt, Alexander P. N.
AU - Konijnendijk van den Bosch, Cecil
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the European Union's Research and Innovation funding programme for 2007–2013 FP 7 ( FP7- ENV.2013.6.2-5-603567 ). The supportive role of EU’s project officer Maria Yeroanni is highly appreciated. Moreover, we express our deep gratitude to the members of the project’s scientific board, Kjell Nilsson, Freerk Wiersum, Maggie Roe and Corina Basnou who supported the project with constructive criticism and inspired us with new thoughts and their persistent enthusiasm. GREEN SURGE was a collective effort of 23 research organisations with more than 100 researchers. As not all could be added as co-authors of this paper it must be highlighted that neither GREEN SURGE nor this paper would have been possible without their excellent research. However, this paper lies at the sole responsibility of its authors.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier GmbH
PY - 2019/4
Y1 - 2019/4
N2 - Urban green infrastructure (UGI)is a promising concept when developing multifunctional green space systems to address major challenges of urbanization such as increasing social cohesion, promoting the transition to a green economy, adaptation to climate change and conservation of biodiversity. In response to the European Commission's Communication on Green Infrastructure from 2013, the GREEN SURGE project aimed to further advance the development of UGI in European cities by (i)strengthening the conceptual foundations of UGI, (ii)developing improved methods and tools for assessment of its state, benefits and governance and, (iii)applying these to build a stronger evidence base. This paper aims to provide an overall synthesis of the project's main achievements. GREEN SURGE adopted an inter- and transdisciplinary approach. Urban Learning Labs and focal Learning Alliances in five cities were instrumental for intensive collaboration between disciplines and across science and practice. Pan-European surveys, e.g. of planning and governance practice or human-nature interactions established the state-of-the-art across the continent and identified good practices. The project consolidated green infrastructure planning and governance conceptually, and it mapped opportunities for better linking government-led planning with bottom-up initiatives for creating and managing UGI. It also introduced a framework for knowledge integration to support UGI valuation. Importantly, development and application of the concept of biocultural diversity gave new insights into human–nature relationships in multicultural urban societies. The results strongly call for more context-sensitive development of UGI that addresses the different needs and diverse cultural practices of people engaging with nature. In a nutshell, GREEN SURGE showed that UGI indeed can make a major contribution to sustainable and resilient urbanisation. Transdisciplinary research in urban labs, if well-conceived, has shown to hold great potential to advance UGI concepts, methods, knowledge and practice.
AB - Urban green infrastructure (UGI)is a promising concept when developing multifunctional green space systems to address major challenges of urbanization such as increasing social cohesion, promoting the transition to a green economy, adaptation to climate change and conservation of biodiversity. In response to the European Commission's Communication on Green Infrastructure from 2013, the GREEN SURGE project aimed to further advance the development of UGI in European cities by (i)strengthening the conceptual foundations of UGI, (ii)developing improved methods and tools for assessment of its state, benefits and governance and, (iii)applying these to build a stronger evidence base. This paper aims to provide an overall synthesis of the project's main achievements. GREEN SURGE adopted an inter- and transdisciplinary approach. Urban Learning Labs and focal Learning Alliances in five cities were instrumental for intensive collaboration between disciplines and across science and practice. Pan-European surveys, e.g. of planning and governance practice or human-nature interactions established the state-of-the-art across the continent and identified good practices. The project consolidated green infrastructure planning and governance conceptually, and it mapped opportunities for better linking government-led planning with bottom-up initiatives for creating and managing UGI. It also introduced a framework for knowledge integration to support UGI valuation. Importantly, development and application of the concept of biocultural diversity gave new insights into human–nature relationships in multicultural urban societies. The results strongly call for more context-sensitive development of UGI that addresses the different needs and diverse cultural practices of people engaging with nature. In a nutshell, GREEN SURGE showed that UGI indeed can make a major contribution to sustainable and resilient urbanisation. Transdisciplinary research in urban labs, if well-conceived, has shown to hold great potential to advance UGI concepts, methods, knowledge and practice.
KW - Green governance and planning
KW - Green infrastructure
KW - GREEN SURGE
KW - Sustainable urbanisation
KW - Urban learning labs
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055429262&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ufug.2018.10.006
DO - 10.1016/j.ufug.2018.10.006
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85055429262
SN - 1618-8667
VL - 40
SP - 4
EP - 16
JO - Urban Forestry and Urban Greening
JF - Urban Forestry and Urban Greening
ER -
