0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

0 / SPK / specialcollections@tulane.edu

In an increasingly urbanised world, addressing the need for access to urban green space has become a pertinent topic of interest. In Cape Town, South Africa, a city of immense biodiversity and unique spatial development, the issue of accessing urban green spaces is particularly important. Environmental and ecological advocates call for conservation of green space, to preserve the rare biodiversity of the region, while pressures for continued development to accommodate the City's growing population override land conservation policy aspirations. The legacy of post-apartheid development is still strongly entrenched in Cape Town, resulting in an inequitable and in efficient city form. Access to quality green space remains problematic in Cape Town. This research seeks to discover how accessible urban green spaces are in Cape Town, and, if barriers exist, whether they are physical, economic, or socially driven. The author has undertaken a case study method approach to conduct this research, focusing on eight nature reserves or conservation areas managed by the City of Cape Town in the southern and eastern suburbs of the City. Key informant interviews (n= 6) were conducted, as well as qualitative and quantitative surveys of park users and the general public. Park users (n= 672) were surveyed on site, at one of the eight green spaces, while the public (n= 317) were surveyed at the nearest commercial shopping area adjacent to the green space. Outcome measures included demographic information, suburb of residence, mode of transport, reasons for choosing mode of transport, frequency of green space visits, and reasons for visiting. Results show the majority of park users accessed the green space by personal vehicle, and very few park users took public transport (n= 3). The majority of users resided in suburbs within two kilometre s of the green space. Park users varied in age, yet young adults aged 16-19 and elderly over the age of 80 accounted for only 2.8% and 1.8% of those surveyed, respectively. The ethnic breakdown of those surveyed was not indicative of Cape Town's ethnic breakdown, according to the 2011 Census, with white South Africans and coloured South Africans accounting for 50% and 39%, respectively. Over a quarter of the public surveyed identified 'lack of information' or 'unaware of what park offers' as the reason for not visiting the green space. Safety and security was a common concern among both park users and the public; many expressed concern about visiting the green space alone, or traveling alone due to issues of security in the adjacent neighbourhoods. From the data gathered in this research, the author concludes that barriers exist in the access of quality green spaces within Cape Town, and include, but are not limited to, issues of proximity, public transport, safety and security, spatial development of the City, varied green space interests, and information barriers. These issues vastly alter how users engage in these eight different green spaces. Further research may be conducted in a more expansive study on Cape Town's green spaces, including small local green spaces in neighbourhoods throughout the City, which may yield interesting results on the access and barriers to access of urban green spaces.

The health benefits of nature are numerous, wide-ranging, and often overlooked. An ever-growing body of research has started to document, substantiate, and even in some cases quantify the significance of interacting with nature and its effect on human health and well-being. These directly measurable health benefits are also compounded in urban environments by environmental and social benefits. For example, the inclusion of green spaces in urban communities has been shown to reduce violence. Green spaces are important for overall health, but also specifically for healing. The benefits of natural spaces in hospitals has been explored in the literature and shown to benefit not only patients but also family and visitors, as well as staff, by creating a healing and restorative environment that helps to reduce stress and alleviate anxiety. Lack of green space in urban communities is creating and exacerbating health disparities. Urban hospitals are often limited in their ability to include extra space, and particularly green space, in their campus, yet it is their patients who need these healing benefits the most. Particularly urban communities of low socioeconomic status are often those with the least access to green spaces, or only have access to low-quality, poorly maintained, unsafe green spaces. Yet the residents of these communities are those who stand to benefit the most from access to nature and a greener environment. Improving the accessibility, quality, safety, and square footage of natural green spaces in urban environments will help improve health equity by mitigating negative effects of the urban built environment on health and well-being, increasing the agency of these communities to live healthier lives, and allow them to reap the physical, emotional, and social benefits of green spaces. / Urban Bioethics

In the UK, urban parks face a precarious future and, with projected cuts of over 65% to local authority discretionary funding (Local Government Association, 2012:2), it is ever more important to understand their value. This study interrogates the value of these resources from the perspective of the individual and, through a mixed method comparative case study of two community parks in Leeds, West Yorkshire, identifies four key challenges to existing framings of their significance. Drawing on primary observational, social survey and interview data, boundaries constructed between forms of value are, firstly, problematized with fluidity recognised between use and non-use aspects. Secondly, a range of previously-omitted past-related values are identified. Negative elements of significance are, then, thirdly, highlighted as heavily interwoven with positive accounts of importance and emphasised as key omissions in prior representations of value. Before, finally, value is stressed as spatially relative, with comparison with other leisure resources noted as an inherent facet of accounts. Taken together, these challenges demarcate an individual perspective of value as notably distinct from those levelled at other scales, such as the firm or community, as it emphasised that, from this perspective, the value of a resource must be rethought as a relational property created in the interaction between people and their environment, rather than an absolute property assigned to a space. Organisations, such as Nesta (Neal, 2013:21) have emphasised a need to ‘rethink' the funding and management of urban parks, moving towards “mixed funding models”, incorporating some level of community voluntarism. This assumed involvement is, however, premised on community engagement which is far from certain. As such, there is a pressing need to understand the value attached to urban parks to understand the scope for expectations of voluntarism to be truly fulfilled.

This thesis starts from the proposition that the ingrained perception of urban green space as being synonymous only with fairly well maintained amenity parkland is too narrow and generally overlooks the many environmental and social benefits that other types of green space and their natural habitats bestow on urban residents and wildlife. A critical review of the literature on the benefits which different kinds of green space confer on urban residents in environmental, social, health and well being and economic terms confirms the need for a more holistic approach to the study of green spaces in cities and also highlights the need to develop and realise a more comprehensive "ontology" of urban green space in tropical countries, a fundamental task which is a main concern of the present thesis. From reviewing the classification schemes or typologies used in different countries to formally recognise and to distinguish different types of green space, the author develops a new, expanded typology for urban green space adapted to Malaysian conditions, aiming to use this as far as possible as a framework to categorise the green spaces of Kuala Lumpur (KL). KL provides a particularly interesting case study as a rapidly growing city in a developing country with a tropical climate, a context where there has been relatively little research on urban green space, despite shade being particularly appreciated in very hot climates. Also KL has experienced much loss of green space in recent decades: on its periphery from urban expansion; and around the city centre from the drive, fuelled by economic growth, to use central land more intensively. The main empirical analysis in the thesis uses data obtained from remotely sensed satellite images of high resolution (from the IKONOS satellite) to try to identify all vegetated forms of land cover in KL and to discern their nature, primarily whether trees, shrubs or grass, regardless of their location, using object oriented software to process the IKONOS data. The degree to which the different types and functions of green space can be identified from IKONOS imagery using both semi-automated and manual methods of visual interpretation is then compared. The results show that, using high resolution IKONOS imagery, it is not possible to identify unambiguously all the types of green land use or green land cover that are found in the proposed, new typology of green space, either by using semi-automatic classification or by visual interpretation, although the latter enables more types of green space to be distinguished with confidence. A key result of the preceding analysis, nevertheless, is to produce maps of green space showing the foregoing 3 classes of vegetation (plus water, bare ground and built up areas) for the entire city in very fine detail using first a semi-automated classification followed by selective manual revision. This produces a more complete picture of the geography of these 3 basic types of green space across the whole city than the typical picture purely or mainly of public parks generated from the typologies used by city governments in developing countries, including KL, simply reflecting their traditional concerns being largely restricted to the latter kinds of green space. These finely detailed maps showing the complex mosaic of green space are, in some respects, the most important result of the thesis. These maps of green space produced from satellite data are linked in a geographic information system (GIS) with data on land use for small land parcels and, using dasymetric methods, with data on population from the census to produce a range of alternative, illuminating perspectives on the nature and extent of green space across the whole city, often at a very fine geographical scale, and including an analysis of the relative provision (or lack thereof) of green space over the whole city; this also yields insight into the role of particular green spaces in the wider urban system. Subsequently, the use of GIS operations enables officially recognised green spaces and the even more extensive and diverse areas of green space not officially recognised to be mapped and examined separately, possibly for the first time in KL. A social survey designed mainly for urban planners and landscape architects in KL was carried out mainly to learn and study their views on the nature, roles and benefits of urban green space, on the new expanded typology, on the problems of protecting urban green space in KL and on what attributes of green spaces they considered should be seen as most important when considering how much priority a particular green space should be given for preservation. From some 38 environmental and social criteria the 41 respondents considered very important, 31 criteria (13 environmental and 18 social) were chosen as attributes to use in evaluating 17 different green spaces of various types in different parts of the city through assessment on site by a small team of trained assessors. A smaller subset of 4 environmental and 3 "social" (actually all accessibility) criteria, selected from the foregoing 31 criteria, was identified which could be estimated "remotely" by "desk based" methods i.e. by using the satellite data and the population data held in our GIS, as well as by direct field survey. It was then possible to compare the 3 sets of evaluations for the 17 green areas in the form of overall rankings in turn on the environmental and then accessibility criteria: firstly the ranks of the sites on all 13 environmental criteria, then on the subset of 4 environmental criteria (both of the latter from field assessment) and finally on the same subset of 4 criteria estimated "remotely". The equivalent overall rankings for the 18 social amenity criteria, then the subset of 3 accessibility indicators from field observation and lastly the same subset of 3 but estimated remotely were then compared. The results showed clear similarities and strong correlations between the three sets of evaluations for the 4 environmental criteria measuring aspects of vegetative cover and "green connectivity" but less consistent similarity for the social and accessibility measures, with only weak correlations between rankings on the field and remote estimates for the 3 accessibility indices. The main conclusion is therefore that "remote" evaluation could potentially have a useful role, complementary to ground surveys, in monitoring and assessing green spaces as regards some key environmental criteria and, more debatably, may also be able to provide useful measures of accessibility, which are difficult to estimate from field visits. However, observation on site is necessary for assessment of nearly all the social criteria relevant to evaluating urban green spaces.

This study is a thematic analysis of written plan-descriptions associated to valid detail-plans in the city of Umeå. These plan-descriptions are used as gateways to how planners and architects have reasoned when it comes to planning decisions. The thematic analysis is conducted on 24 selected detail-plans in the city of Umeå and has the starting point of the three themes of Mobility, Green space and Safety. The themes are identified as important to study in the light of the sustainable development concept where new modes of transportation, better knowledge about how nature affects us and a safe environment for everyone are propagated. By making better use of the fine source of information and insights that are the detail-plans students, researchers and practitioners can more effectively steer their efforts towards areas that really are in need of change. There is also something to be learned about the connection between process and outcome in physical planning. The results of this study show first of all that the scope and the thoroughness of detail-planning have changed over time. During the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s the plans generally covered larger areas and the descriptions where short and concise. In present time the plans generally cover smaller areas but are very exhausting in their investigative preparing work and associated documents. Other findings are that the goal of a safe environment in the detail-plans mostly is connected to traffic-safety.

Urban ecological restoration and the creation of urban green space has become a major focus for environmental organizations in Milwaukee, WI. This thesis examines the inclusivity practices of two Milwaukee organizations working on environmental restoration and asks the question, how can inclusive restoration be used to broaden the environmental justice framework? Literature was reviewed on the topics of Inclusive Restoration, Access to Green Space, and Environmental Justice. Through participant observations, interviews, and surveys, themes emerged regarding the perceived value of urban restoration, creation of green space, and how Inclusive Restoration is or is not used to enhance community engagement and further environmental justice discourse. The organizations were evaluated with regard to their inclusive restoration practices using the Multicultural Organization Development Model. Recommendations are offered with the intention of increasing the engagement of communities directly affected by organizational restoration practices with regard to project planning and volunteer participation.

Urban development diminishes the delivery of ecosystem services (ES), defined as benefits from ecological processes and functions critical to human health and well-being. Land-use planners and environmental managers are increasingly familiar with the concept of ES; however, methods for incorporating ES into urban planning are underdeveloped. While previous reports have identified the combination of ES quantification and stakeholder engagement as necessary for increasing the delivery of ES, methods of implementation remain unexplored. To address this disparity, this study combines ES quantification with perspectives from multiple stakeholders to identify specific land cover conversion scenarios that increase the delivery of ES in the Friendly Area Neighborhood of Eugene, Oregon and compares each conversion scenario using an informed weighting system. The result is a method, with potential for use by researchers and public officials, to quantify the delivery of ES, identify stakeholders’ ES priorities, and assess the benefits associated with green infrastructure development. / 2020-01-11