Over the past decades, the fast-changing global climate poses a significant challenge to many cities around the world to embrace resilience concepts, whereby a safe-to-fail planning approach replaces traditional fail-safe practices. The change in perspectives has seen an increase in climate-adapted infrastructural projects being integrated with the new urban planning agendas across the world. The investigation conducted was designed to understand the process of how resilience concepts travel between different cities, by investigating the actors who move policy knowledge, their roles in it, as well as the knowledge transfer process mechanism that is responsible for the movement of such policies. The investigation took advantage of a scoping study technique to answer the research questions, using mostly secondary data and an interview to verify the secondary sources. The findings and the discussion provided insights on who is involved in resilience policies and how these policies are transferred from one place to another. The investigation uncovered the influence policy mobilizers has on the movement of policy knowledge, as well as how the mobilization of policy knowledge can both be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the way it was moved or implemented. / Under de senaste decennierna utgör det snabba föränderliga globala klimatet en betydande utmaning för många städer runt om i världen med att anamma motståndskraftskoncept, där en planeringsstrategi med säkerhet att misslyckas ersätter traditionella felsäkra metoder. Förändringen i perspektiv har ökat klimatanpassade infrastrukturprojekten som integrerats med nya stadsplaneringsagendorna över hela världen. Studien genomfördes för att få en förståelse av hur motståndskraftskonceptet färdas mellan olika städer och detta genomfördes genom att undersöka de aktörer som förflyttar politisk kunskap och deras roller i den samt den kunskapsöverföringsmekanism som är ansvarig för rörelsen av sådan politik. Studien utnyttjade en scoping-studieteknik för att få svar på forskningsfrågorna, med mestadels sekundär data och en intervju för att verifiera sekundärkällorna. Resultaten och diskussionen gav insikter om vem som är inblandad i motståndskraft och hur policy överförs från en plats till en annan. Studien avslöjade även inflytande av politiskt mobilisering och kunskap som både kan vara fördelaktig eller skadlig beroende på hur den flyttades eller genomfördes.

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Since the early 2000s, the city of Paris has launched several greening initiatives with the scope of, among many, strengthening its green infrastructure (henceforth, GI). With the support of the municipality, citizens actively participate in this transformation, for instance by reactivating and managing former wasteland sites, making the streets blossom, covering walls and roofs with plants and creating new micro-ecosystems. But what is their impact? Citizens engaged in selected participatory initiatives along the local GI have been questioned and interviewed to find out more about their projects. Citizens - either alone, in small groups, organised in local associations, start-ups or companies - act for different reasons and do not always know the concept of GI. Questionnaire respondents value their project first of all because it improves their living environment, but also because it facilitates reconnecting with nature and promotes biodiversity. However, their actions are not coordinated as to effectively reinforce GI. In other words, people’s projects spread everywhere and not particularly where they are most needed. Through the revision of local planning and policy documents, as well as interviews with key actors, this work also highlights contradictions between definition, strategies, maps and meanings of the GI in Paris. Some recommendations are provided to expand the ecological and public GI of today into a veritable multifunctional GI through multidisciplinary and participatory approaches. / Sedan början av 2000-talet har staden Paris startat flera grönskande initiativ med syfte attbland annat återinföra naturen i staden och stärka dess gröna infrastruktur (GI). Med kommunens stöd deltar medborgarna aktivt i denna omvandling, till exempel genom att återaktivera och gemensamt sköta tidigare ödemarker, få gatorna att blomma, täcka väggar och tak med växter och skapa nya mikroekosystem. Men vad är deras inverkan? Medborgare som deltar i utvalda deltagande initiativ längs den lokala GI har utfrågats och intervjuats för att ta reda på mer om sina projekt. Medborgare - antingen ensamma, i små grupper, organiserade i lokala föreningar, nystartade företag eller företag - agerar av olika skäl och känner inte alltid till begreppet grön infrastruktur. De som svarar på frågeformuläret värderar först sitt projekt eftersom det förbättrar deras livsmiljö, men också för att det underlättar återanslutning med naturen och främjar biologisk mångfald. Men deras handlingar samordnas inte för att effektivt stärka GI, eller delar av det. Med andra ord, människor som grönar projekt sprids överallt och inte särskilt där de behövs mest. Genom översynen av lokala planerings- och policydokument, samt intervjuer med nyckelaktörer, belyser detta arbete också motsägelser mellan GI-definition, strategier, kartor och betydelser. Vissa rekommendationer tillhandahålls för att utöka dagens ekologiska och offentliga GI till en verifierbar multifunktionell GI genom multidisciplinära och deltagande strategier. / Depuis le début des années 2000, la ville de Paris a lancé plusieurs initiatives de végétalisation pour réintroduire la nature dans la ville et renforcer ses trames vertes et bleues (TVB). Avec le soutien de la municipalité, les citoyens participent activement à cette transformation, par exemple en réactivant et en gérant d’anciennes friches, en faisant fleurir les rues, en recouvrant les murs et les toits de végétaux et en créant de nouveaux microécosystèmes. Mais quel est leur impact ? Les citoyens engagés dans des initiatives participatives sélectionnées le long de la TVB locale ont été interrogés et interviewés pour en savoir plus sur leurs projets. Les citoyens - seuls, en petits groupes, organisés en associations locales, start-up ou entreprises - agissent pour des raisons différentes et ne connaissent pas toujours le concept de TVB. Les répondants au questionnaire valorisent d’abord leur projet parce qu’il améliore leur cadre de vie, mais aussi parce qu’il facilite la reconnexion avec la nature et favorise la biodiversité. Cependant, leurs actions ne sont pas coordonnées pour renforcer efficacement les TVB. En d’autres termes, les projets de végétalisation des citoyens se répandent partout et pas particulièrement là où ils sont les plus nécessaires. À travers l’analyse des documents de planification locaux, ainsi que des entretiens avec des acteurs clés, ce travail met également en évidence les contradictions entre la définition, les stratégies, les cartes et les significations des TVB. Quelques recommandations sont formulées pour faire de la TVB écologique et publique d’aujourd’hui une véritable TVB multifonctionnelle à travers des approches multidisciplinaires et participatives.

<p>Many cities around the world struggle with the presence of vacant and underutilized land in the urban environment. There is growing momentum across many municipal jurisdictions in North America to reuse public and privately held vacant and underutilized urban land on a temporary to potentially permanent basis for community-based projects; however, there are limited community-based tools available to assess the suitability of vacant land for potential reuse.</p> <p>This thesis presents three papers (Chapters 2-4) that describe the development and application of a prototype community-based decision support tool (PDSS), developed in Microsoft ExcelÒ. The PDSS provides a methodology for evaluating up to fifteen community-based reuse strategies across three green infrastructure categories: parks, urban food production, and stormwater/ecosystems management. The PDSS aids in deriving community-focused goals, objectives and solutions for the efficient reuse of vacant and underutilized land.</p> <p>The PDSS includes a vacant and underutilized land inventory for identifying and inventorying the physical and spatial attributes (i.e. location and condition) of vacant and underutilized land across the urban environment (VULI); a methodology for quantifying the suitability of vacant land for a suite of reuse strategies (SSI); a multi-objective, binary-integer programming formulation for the allocation of reuse strategies across the urban environment (LOCAL), and a tool for municipal green infrastructure investment decision-making (DECO).</p> <p>The information derived from VULI and SSI can be used by community groups to help articulate the inherent potential of these spaces for future reuse. If this methodology was adopted at the municipal level, the prototype tool has the potential to expedite applications to reuse city-owned lands on a temporary basis. LOCAL provides a methodology to facilitate the allocation of multiple reuse strategies to a single parcel, to achieve a mix of green infrastructure uses at each site, and provides users with the ability to readily generate “what-if” scenarios based on user-specified allocation constraints. DECO can be utilized to design and investigate material alternatives, maintenance schedules, and different cost regimes, which can be useful for construction and long-term preventative maintenance decision-making. Finally, the results of a tree growth-stormwater attenuation modeling exercise are presented (Chapter 5). The methodology and results presented aid in articulating the stormwater attenuating benefits of trees that are planted on a temporary basis on vacant land.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis addresses three interlinked aspects that are relevant for mainstreaming Nature-based Solutions in urban planning. The first aspect concerns the integration and use of ecosystem service knowledge in spatial planning. A literature review aimed at analysing practical applications of ecosystem services in real-life planning processes and instruments reveals both the outcomes generated and the procedures adopted to integrate them, as well as the main advantages, constraints, enabling factors, and open issues associated with ecosystem service knowledge integration in spatial planning processes and instruments. The second aspect is related to the use of spatial assessments of ecosystem service demand to support an effective planning of Nature-based Solutions at the city scale. An approach is developed to allocate and prioritize Nature-based Solutions in cities in order to deliver ecosystem services for addressing the existing urban challenges while maximising the benefits for residents. The approach is tested in the case study area of Valletta (Malta), identifying the potential sites for the implementation of eleven types of Nature-based Solutions, assessing the demand for five priority ecosystem services, and identifying what type(s) of Nature-based Solutions, among the eleven proposed, should be implemented in each potential site, as well as the sites that should be prioritized first. The third aspect involves the promotion of the implementation of Nature-based Solutions in urban plans through the use of suitable policy instruments. A matrix that links the suitable instruments identified to different typologies of Nature-based Solutions reveals the range of instruments that can be deployed to promote the implementation of each type of Nature-based Solution. The matrix is then applied to analyse which instruments are currently deployed and which are not in the two urban plans covering the case study area of Valletta, hence the missing opportunities that could be further exploited.

The global mean temperature is continuously increasing despite of the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping it from rising more than 1.5-2°C above pre-industrial levels. Cities are the main contributors to the increasing temperature as they emit more than 70% of total global CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is important to achieve net-zero emissions in cities to stop temperature from increasing further. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) have proven to be a cost-effective strategy to reduce CO2 emissions in urban environments (by up to 25%). Research needs to be conducted on how NbS should be incorporated into policy for them to have the best effects and desired outcomes. This thesis explores how NbS can be effectively implemented in environmental policies to reach set goals and achieve desired effects. It aims to explore factors in the Stockholm Royal Seaport (SRS) environmental policy that can strengthen and constrain the implementation of NbS. The intention of this thesis is also to learn how this area’s policy affects the collaboration between stakeholders, including residents, in this area. The research questions of this thesis are: (1) What are the environmental policies related to Nature-based Solutions used by Stockholm Royal Seaport to achieve climate positivity and strengthen ecosystem services? (2) What key factors in the environmental policies in Stockholm Royal Seaport can be identified as supporting or constraining the implementation of Nature-based Solutions? (3) How do the environmental policies in Stockholm Royal Seaport affect the collaboration among stakeholders in this area? A case study on SRS is conducted to answer these questions. The data is collected from this area’s latest steering document and sustainability report, and interviews. Thematic analysis is used to analyse the collected data. The results from the exploratory research are that SRS’s policies presented in goal four of the steering document, such as the promotion of blue and green infrastructure, positively affect the NbS used in this area to strengthen ecosystem services. However, these solutions are not explicitly identified as strategies to achieve climate positivity. Two key factors that support implementing NbS in SRS have been identified. The first is the requirement for developments to follow the stormwater management strategy and the Green Space Index. Second is the encouragement of collaboration between stakeholders. Three key constraining factors identified are: 1) the lack of definition and communication of the NbS strategies, and the reason for implementing them; 2) the lack of mention and explanation of NbS in the steering document; 3) limiting budgets. The policy in SRS is highly focused on, and encourages, collaboration and knowledge development between stakeholders, therefore, it is concluded that this area’s policy has a positive effect on this policy aspect and contributes to increasing collaboration.

The aim of this study is to examine the public preferences for urban riparian corridors in arid ‎regions, by testing to what extent people are willing to trade-off unmaintained ecological ‎landscape for aesthetics offered by specific micro and ‎macro environmental factors. Landscape ‎design reflects ecological and aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between the two in ‎‎practice. In arid regions, water scarcity means riparian corridors are the ‎richest landscape ‎typology and the only ‎blue-green links for hundreds of miles. Pressure from ‎urbanization and ‎lack of eco-literacy contribute to negative ‎feedback loops which present dire ‎challenges for ‎migrating avifauna and regional wildlife. Regarding natural ‎resources and ‎biodiversity, where ‎multiple deliverable ‎ecosystem services rely on the quality and health of that ‎‎ecosystem, riparian ‎systems with high biomass are more desirable. Although this can be ‎achieved with low or no ‎‎maintenance riparian buffers, these unmaintained ecological landscapes ‎play an intrinsic role in ‎sustaining the ‎global ecosystem services and are important for the survival of the inhabitants ‎‎(avifauna). Ecological ‎landscapes are often subjected to trade-offs with aesthetic ‎landscapes that ‎include micro and ‎macro environmental factors such as manicured landscapes. It is accepted that ‎‎there is a ‎preference for aesthetics in landscape design; however, it is unclear how laypeople ‎prioritize ‎aesthetics ‎over different ecological factors in landscape scenes. This study uses a ‎Discrete Choice ‎Experiment (DCE) to elicit the ‎preferences of current or pretendant residents of ‎Jeddah City, Saudi Arabia for multiple landscape scenes. The method ‎combines ecological ‎landscape characteristics adopted from ‎the QBR index that are found in the study area in Jeddah ‎and aesthetic ‎characteristics, such as micro and macro environmental factors that are commonly ‎suggested in landscape design projects adapted from relevant visual preference studies (Alsaiari, ‎‎2018; Kenwick et al., 2009; Kuper‎ ‎,‎2017; Zhao et al., 2017). ‎DCE is a widely used method to ‎reveal preferences by analyzing the trade-offs people make ‎between ‎alternatives. Participants in ‎this study were exposed to a set of designs, which included ‎various configurations of ‎aesthetic ‎and ecological elements. Participants' choices revealed the influence of their ecological and ‎‎aesthetic values. Results show that minimal design interventions would prevent trading off the ‎ecological unmaintained landscape and that there are four subgroups with distinct homogeneous ‎preferences for the attributes affecting the appeal for the urban riparian corridor in Jeddah City. ‎Finally, results show that even though there are significant differences between subgroups based ‎on preferences, the demographic information is proportionally distributed in a way the means ‎differences diminish between the subgroups. ‎Findings in this study will equip ‎decision-makers ‎with operational definitions relating to riparian ‎landscape design and a method ‎that they can use ‎to minimize losses in ecological value over aesthetic value. This study will help‎ ‎researchers and ‎landscape architects advance visual preference research further into the domain ‎of empirical ‎‎studies.‎ ‎ / Doctor of Philosophy / Landscape architecture is a profession that entails planning and design outdoor spaces, ‎‎landmarks, and ‎structures to improve the built environment and increasing the quality of ‎‎people's lives by achieving ‎environmental, social, economic, and aesthetic outcomes‎. The ‎profession often reflects ecological and ‎aesthetic values, and trade-offs are often made ‎between ‎the two in ‎practice. These ecological values ‎represent environmental characteristics that are ‎important for the survival of wildlife (protected path ‎and safe habitat) and the overall ecosystem ‎‎(every being has a role that sustain the health of the ‎environment). Culturally, human is ‎accustomed to a slick-and-clean (tamped) looking plant within urban ‎developments (i.e., ‎neighborhoods). An example of the trade-off that often happen in practice between ‎the ‎ecological and aesthetic values is replacing an ecologically unmaintained plants that play ‎important ‎ecological role (i.e., wildlife habitat) with clean tamped plants to increase the value of ‎a real estate. Due ‎to the uncertainty surrounding people's acceptance of the features of these ‎ecological unmaintained ‎plants, especially when it entails introducing ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes within ‎neighborhoods for the first time, this dissertation focuses on both ‎assessing ecological elements ‎preferences within an urban arid region in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia ‎and assessing the extent to which ‎advanced analytical methods are capable of providing a better ‎understanding of ecological riparian ‎landscape attributes preference differences among a ‎seemingly homogenous sample of participants. ‎The increasing usage of manipulated images in ‎choice tasks inspired this dissertation. The results of the ‎study demonstrate that among the ‎relatively homogenous sample of participants that was recruited, ‎four significant preference ‎patterns have emerged, which could be used to describe and predict ‎preference for ecological ‎riparian landscape attributes and choice with great accuracy. The dissertation ‎also investigates ‎policy implications that might be beneficial in creating a ‎physical environment that ‎match public ‎preferences. ‎It also offers research implications and recommendations for landscape ‎architects ‎and urban designers on how to employ visual choice experiments, which have been well-‎‎developed in other research field

Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka om regnbäddar utnyttjas till sin fulla kapacitet avseende dess multifunktionalitet i relation till miljönytta och klimatförändringar. Mer konkret ämnade studien att ta reda på om regnbäddar kan användas till att både ta hand om ökade regnmängder och skapa en magasinering av vatten för torrperioder. Vidare syftade studien till att förstå vilka möjligheter, hinder och utmaningar det finns vid implementering av regnbäddar utifrån klimatanpassningssynpunkt eftersom klimatförändringarna leder till både stora vattenmängder och extrema torrperioder. Strategiskt urval och snöbollsurval användes som urvalsmetod i enlighet med Bryman (2018) för att välja ut relevanta informanter inför utförandet av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Kodning av empirin visade att där fanns en stor variation av möjligheter, hinder och utmaningar.  Resultatet visade att både möjligheter, hinder och utmaningar förekommer i de två kustkommunerna relaterade till implementeringen av regnbäddar med kombinerade användningsområde. Resultatet påvisade att regnbäddar ofta implementeras för att uppfylla en fördröjande funktion. Dessutom framkom det att regnbäddar erhåller multifunktionalitet utifrån dess utformning, konstruktion och placering. Slutsatsen är att regnbäddar inte implementeras i de två undersökta kustkommunerna i syfte att samtidigt omhänderta stora vattenmängder vid skyfall, öka infiltrationen i områden med hårdgjord mark, rena regnvatten och magasinera vatten för användning vid torrperioder för bevattning av grönstruktur. Alltså kombineras inte olika användningsområden i regnbäddar. Det främsta syftet som regnbäddar implementeras för är fördröjning av vatten och därmed köpa sig tid så att ledningsnätet blir mindre belastat. / This bachelor thesis examined if rain gardens are used to their full capacity regarding their multifunctionality in relation to environmental benefits and climate change. More specifically, the study aimed to examine if rain gardens can be used to take care of increased rainfall and create a self-storage of water for dry periods. Furthermore, the study aimed to understand which opportunities, barriers and challenges there are implementing rain gardens from a climate adaptation point of view. Since climate change leads to both large amounts of water and extremely dry periods. Strategic sampling and snowball sampling has been used as sampling methods in accordance with Bryman (2018) to select relevant informants for the performance of semi structured interviews. Coding of the empirical data showed that there are a variety of opportunities, barriers and challenges. The result showed that there are both opportunities, barriers and challenges when it comes to implementation of rain gardens with combined functions in the two coastal municipalities.  The result also showed that rain gardens often are implemented with the purpose of fulfilling a delaying function. In addition, it emerged that rain gardens acquire multifunctionality based on how they are designed and their placement. The study’s conclusion is that rain gardens in the two coastal municipalities are not implemented in purpose to dispose large amounts of water during heavy rainfall, increase infiltration in areas with hard soil, purify rainwater and store water for usage during dry periods for irrigation of green structure. Therefore, different functions are not combined in rain gardens. The primary purpose for which rain gardens are implemented is to delay water and gain more time so that the pipeline system is less affected.

Mångfunktionell grön infrastruktur har en betydande roll för städers resiliens tackvare de ekosystemtjänsterna de bidrar med. På grund av den snabba expansionen avstäder skapas ofta målkonflikter gällande markanvändning vilket har lett till att dengröna infrastrukturen i många fall bortprioriterats. För att motverka denna utvecklingär det viktigt att beakta den gröna infrastrukturen och dess ekosystemtjänster tidigt iplaneringsskedet. Syftet med arbetet är att skapa en modell för att utvärderamångfunktionalitet samt hur ekosystemtjänster påverkas vid förändring i urban miljö.Metoden som legat till grund för arbetet har varit analyser av öppna rumsliga datakombinerat med multikriterieanalys. Arbetet har avgränsats till endast inkluderamiljömångfald, konnektivitet, klimatreglering, samt rekreation. Resultatet av arbetetvisar att genom kombinationen av rumsliga analyser och multikriterieanalys kan fleraekosystemtjänster och ekologiska funktioner analyseras samtidigt. Vidare kanmodellen användas som planeringsunderlag för att identifiera styrkor och utmaningarvid förändring av den gröna infrastrukturen i urbana miljöer. / Multifunctional green infrastructure (GI) is central for the resilience of cities, due tothe ecosystem services (ES) it provides. The rapid expansion of cities often createsconflicting interests regarding the land use, which has led to the undermining of theurban green infrastructure (UGI). It’s, therefore, important to consider GI and ES inthe early stages of urban planning. The aim of this study is to develop a model for GImultifunctionality and ES evaluation. The method used to accomplish this is acombination of a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and spatial analyses. This study’sscope only incorporates environmental variety, connectivity, climate regulation andrecreation. The results of this study show that the combination of MCA and spatialanalyses allow the evaluation of several ES and ecological functions simultaneously.Furthermore, the model can be used as a basis for the urban planning process throughthe identification of strengths and challenges of the UGI.