Chronic health conditions such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes are on the rise in Canada, and particularly in Nova Scotia. Lifestyle-related factors including stress level, exercise, and a healthy diet are crucial to preventing such illnesses. Research shows that access to greenspace can greatly effect physical and mental health in terms of stress-reduction, social cohesion and exercise promotion. Importantly, food-producing greenspace provides further mental and physical benefits; highlighting the importance of a healthy diet and a connection to the earth. Despite these findings, productive greenspace in our cities as a viable source of wellness is not optimized. This project, located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, examines how productive greenspace can be integrated with interactive learning spaces to encourage a preventative approach to lifestyle-based illnesses.

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This thesis explores the potential role of greenspace to promote physical activity in young adolescents in Scotland through an examination of physical activity behaviour associated with greenspace use and adolescents motivations to use greenspace, and experiences, attitudes and perceptions of greenspace. This is in light of political interest in promoting physical activity in all populations, especially in young people, as one way to help prevent obesity and promote health and well-being, and recognition that a link between greenspace provision and greenspace has been suggested by research, however, the evidence base is currently limited, particularly within Scotland. Research into greenspace links to physical activity are usually framed within an overarching socio-ecological perspective, however, additional theoretical perspectives are discussed which can add to understanding of adolescents’ use of greenspace. An argument is made for the use of Gibson’s Theory of Affordances and this is further developed to make the links between greenspace design, provision and use. The research included two studies. Study one involved the design, testing and placement of greenspace use questions into a survey of a nationally representative sample of 13 and 15 year-olds across Scotland (n=4697). This was done in collaboration with the Scotland team for the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. The second study used a mixed methods design which employed GPS (global positioning system), accelerometry and GIS (geographical information system), referred to in this research as the GAG method, as an objective measure of physical activity location, timing and duration for a sample of n=35 13 and 15 year-olds. This is a relatively new method used in environment and physical activity research and the present study makes a contribution to understanding this method in practice. The GAG study also included semi-structured interviews with participants at the end of the period of monitoring physical activity. The two studies combined demonstrated a positive association between use of greenspace and higher quantity of and intensity of physical activity. Logistic regression on the survey data revealed that an adolescent who used greenspace more than three times per week was 42% more likely to achieve 60 minutes of moderate physical activity daily. The GAG study demonstrated that, when in greenspace, a lower proportion of time was spent being sedentary compared to when not in greenspace (48.6% vs. 81.7%). In interviews, the adolescents described a wide variety of physical activities taking place in greenspace, many incidental to being in greenspace as opposed to planned beforehand, although this was also encountered. Four types of greenspace user were identified and helped highlight how social motivations to use greenspace were paramount suggesting that the impact of greenspace on physical activity is both a result of motivation to be active, but also a benefit of going to greenspace for social reasons. This bi-directional relationship complicates endeavours to demonstrate cause and effect and suggests the requirement for more research to understand the interaction between psycho-social and environmental factors. Greenspace use appeared to be relatively high. The HBSC survey found that a large majority of young adolescents in Scotland (71%) reported using greenspace at least once per week in the summer months, and may well be one of the most frequent users groups. However, scope remains to further increase use aimed at increasing physical activity and it is argued that more flexibility exists for this possibility than within other domains for physical activity, such as school PE classes. The interviews revealed that motivations and influences on use of greenspace were found to closely reflect the a priori model (based on previous mainly public space research) with clear evidence of interplay between factors influencing intention and opportunity. Developmental attributes of the adolescent stage were indicated to be strongly influential in motivating greenspace use, however, the relative impact of the range of factors was uncertain with decisions to use greenspace complex and dynamic. Despite this complexity, improvements in the physical condition of greenspace, safety and greenspace quality are likely to be universally welcomed. From a theoretical perspective, the findings supported the existence of design, normative and individual affordances which have relevance for how greenspace and the facilities within them are designed and used and how exclusionary practices can arise. Political endorsement of the importance of greenspace to health and well-being is evident and this research supports continued protection, investment and improvement, particularly in greenspace quality. There is, however, a need to further develop policy to incorporate consideration of the role of youth and community services and park management aimed at facilitating positive use of and experiences in parks and other greenspace for all users.

Variation in exposure to environmental microbial communities has been implicated in the etiology of allergies, asthma and other chronic and immune disorders. In particular, preliminary research suggests that exposure to a high diversity of microbes during early life, for example through living in highly vegetated environments like farms or forests, may have specific health benefits, including immune system development and stimulation. In the face of rapidly growing cities and potential reductions in urban greenspace, it is vital to clarify our understanding of the relationship between vegetation and microbial communities so that we can better design cities that support human health. To explore whether and how urban airborne bacterial communities vary with the amount and structural diversity of nearby vegetation, I used passive air sampling and culture-independent microbial DNA sequencing combined with more traditional landscape architecture tools, including geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing data. The results indicated that locations with little vegetation (i.e., paved parking lots) were marked by significantly different bacterial composition from areas that were heavily vegetated (parks and forests). These differences were largely driven by taxonomic groups and indicator species that were enriched at certain sites. My work also shows that regional agricultural activities during the summer may have a substantial effect on airborne bacterial communities in the Eugene-Springfield metropolitan area (Oregon), specifically through elevated abundance of Sphingomonas faeni, a taxon previously isolated from hay dust. The second part of my work focused on building a conceptual bridge between scientific findings and potential design principles that can be tested in practical application. I performed a narrative review of vegetation-health, vegetation-microbe, and microbe-health relationships, which formed the foundation of a framework to translate scientific findings into design-relevant concepts. Strengthening this linkage between science and design will help ensure that research questions are relevant to design practice and that new scientific knowledge is accessible to designers. This dissertation includes previously published and unpublished co-authored material. / 2020-09-06

Climate change projections estimate a rise of approximately 3 °C by the 2080‘s for most of the UK (under a medium emissions scenario at 50% probability level, 1961-1990 baseline). Warming is of particular concern for urban areas due to the issues of urban densification and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. To combat warming, one adaptation strategy that has been suggested for urban areas is increasing the proportion of greenspace, such as parks, gardens, street tree plantings, and green roofs. While a number of studies have investigated the cooling effect of greenspace in terms of park size, proximity to a park, or area covered by tree canopy, little is yet known about the specific types of greenspace that contribute to its cooling effectiveness and how this relates to building energy demand. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach to model fine-scale changes to greenspace for a temperate northern UK city, linking the resulting microclimate changes to building energy consumption in commercial buildings. Using the urban microclimate model ENVI-met, two study areas (one urban one suburban) were modelled with seven different greenspace scenarios (a base case representing current field conditions, +5% new trees, +5% mature trees, +5% hedges, addition of a green roof on the largest building, changing all current greenspace to grass only, and changing all current greenspace to asphalt only) for a summer day in July 2010. The models were calibrated based on measured air temperature data and then analysed for microclimate changes due to each greenspace scenario. Both the modelled and measured microclimate data were then used to inform a series of building energy models using IES-VE 2012 for three commercial building types, estimating summer cooling and winter heating trade-offs due to greenspace effects. For the most effective scenario of adding 5% mature trees to the urban case study, the microclimate modelling estimates a maximum hourly air temperature reduction of nearly 0.7 °C at 5 pm and surface temperature reductions up to 1.7 °C at 3 pm. In the suburban case study, a 5% increase in mature deciduous trees can reduce mean hourly surface temperatures by 1 °C between 10 am and 5 pm, while the worst case scenario of replacing all current vegetation (20% of the study area) with asphalt results in increased air temperature of 3.2 °C at mid-day. The building energy modelling estimates a reduction of 2.7% in July chiller energy due to the combination of reduced UHI peak hours and eight additional trees (four on the north side and four on the south side) of a three-storey shallow plan building. These energy savings increase to 4.8% under a three-day period of peak UHI conditions. While winter boiler energy usage shows large reductions for a building in an urban location with a low proportion of greenspace (as compared to a suburban location), this benefit is marginal when analysed in terms of carbon trade-offs between summer cooling and winter heating requirements.

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Urban greenspace has the potential to bring a lot of positive effects to the urban environment. Better health for its residents, increased biodiversity as well as helping the city adapt to the changing climate, to name a few examples. At the same time, the current planning paradigm in Sweden values the creation of dense urban environments. This, coupled with the current housing shortage, creates a situation where urban greenspace is being put under a lot of pressure and on the risk of being exploited in densification processes. This thesis has explored how urban greenspace is valued, as well as which strategies are being employed, in comprehensive municipal planning documents. Through the use of a documentary content analysis, comprehensive planning documents from three Swedish municipalities have been analyzed: Umeå, Uppsala and Helsingborg. The results shows that the analyzed municipalities have a fairly balanced valuation of its urban greenspace in their comprehensive planning documents. No one aspect of the sustainable development is given a significantly higher value compared to the other. At the same time, different patterns emerges when looking at themes underlying the different aspects of the sustainable development, with themes such as recreation being discussed to a higher degree in comprehensive planning documents from Umeå and Uppsala, compared to Helsingborg. The strategies employed by the studied municipalities are also quite similar, although the details vary. All three municipalities are vague in describing their strategies for urban greenspace, but Umeå and Helsingborg goes further with working with quantifiable goals, compared to Uppsala.

Harvest Hope Park is a brownfield redevelopment project for the University Area Community Development Corporation (University Area CDC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to the sustainable redevelopment of north Tampa neighborhoods. While the project is still in progress, the University Area CDC has noted a lack of community engagement by local residents. The neighborhood, sometimes referred to as “suitcase city” because of the presumed transient nature of the population, has been plagued with poverty, blight, decay, high crime rates, and a lack of basic resources for decades (32 percent of the population in this area lives below the 2016 national poverty line). This project examines the importance of community engagement and capacity building through the environmental redevelopment of brownfield sites while enhancing human-environmental health. The methods used in this research consist of participant observation during University Area CDC events, semi-structured interviews with residents and University Area CDC staff, and analysis of available University Area CDC documents and data. This research identifies the environmental, health, and social impacts of the redevelopment of Harvest Hope Park. Results of the research support the hypothesis that engagement of residents in brownfield redevelopment projects supports building the foundation for the skills, abilities, and resources to advocate for change in their community.

City greenspaces are often considered as refuges for wildlife living in the urban area.At the same time, the original function of greenspaces is providing relaxing places forpeople. So, to provide suitable area for both humans and wildlife in the city, it isimportant to learn about the preference to city greenspace design by humans and birds.In this study, I selected 45 city greenspaces from Stockholm and Uppsala, Sweden, andused opportunistic citizen science bird records, environmental parameters ofgreenspaces analyzed by GIS and an online social survey to compare the preference ofbirds (using bird diversity as a proxy for preference) and humans living in urban areawith respect to certain environmental parameters of city greenspaces. I found that bothpeople and birds prefer greenspaces with large area, and some water area in or aroundgreenspace. I also found some conflicting preferences in that people more preferredgreenspaces near the city center but bird diversity was higher in greenspaces fartherfrom the city center. These results might bring new mind for urban ecology researchand ecofriendly city greenspace design. Greenspaces with larger area and water areawould be preferred by both people and birds.

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