The Usage and Perception of Pedestrian and Cycling Streets on Residents’ Well-being in Kalamaria, Greece

Evaluating the public acceptance of sustainable mobility interventions responding to Covid-19: The case of the Great Walk of Athens and the importance of citizen engagement

COVID-19, the most wide-spread and disruptive pandemic in over a century, enforced emergency urban design responses meaning to recalibrate transport provision globally. This is the first work that systematically evaluates the 'public acceptance' as a proxy for 'policy success' and 'potential for longer-term viability' of the high-profile sustainable transport intervention package introduced in 2020 in the capital city of Greece known as the Great Walk of Athens (GWA). This is achieved through a twin statistical analysis of an e-survey that looked into the attitudes and urban mobility experiences of Athenians accessing the area of the trial daily. The research enabled a comparison between the pre- and post-implementation traffic situations and provided details about specific measures packaged in the GWA project. Our results suggest that walking and cycling uptake were only marginally improved. Traffic delays for car users were considerable. Car usage declined somewhat, with the exception of ride-sharing. Public transport ridership numbers suffered a lot because of concerns about sharing closed space with many others during a pandemic. Men and people on low income were more likely to agree with the 'change'. Naturally this was the case for people identified as primarily cyclists and pedestrians. The most impactful package elements in terms of car lane sacrifices (i.e., the redevelopment of Panepistimiou Street) had the lowest acceptability rates. A key reason that underpinned people's hesitation to approve the GWA initiative was the lack of public consultation in the decision-making that shaped the project. Our study provides evidence-based generalisable lessons for similar metropolitan environments looking to implement more or evaluate for possibly making permanent 'rushed' anti-Covid street redevelopment measures.

Stakeholders' perceptions of appropriate nature-based solutions in the urban context

The concept of nature-based solutions (NBSs) has become increasingly popular among urban policymakers and planners to help them tackle the urban challenges arising from urban expansion and climate change. Stakeholders' involvement is a fundamental step, and stakeholders' perceptions and preferences can affect the development of NBS projects. This study aims to identify stakeholders' perceptions of the most critical urban challenges, the priority interventions, the preferred NBSs and the benefits of the NBSs, and to identify the determinants of these perceptions. A survey was administered to assess stakeholders' perceptions and views on implementing NBSs in two Portuguese cities with distinct urban, geographical, and socio-economic contexts. A binary logistic regression model was used to understand the determinants of the likelihood of the stakeholders' answers. According to the stakeholders, climate change is one of the main concerns in the urban context. It is usually associated with the incidence of heatwaves and water scarcity. Additionally, stakeholders are concerned about the low quantity and poor management of green spaces (GSs). They believe that it will be necessary to increase the GS, to recover some degraded areas, and to increase mobility. The preferred NBSs were planting more urban trees, making green shaded areas, and rehabilitating riverbanks. The main expected benefits were benefits for leisure and relaxation, reductions in air temperature, purer air, and improvements in public health. The results showed mostly coherent connections between the main concerns/priorities of the stakeholders and the perceived NBS benefits; however, some stakeholders did not present coherent connections, indicating low awareness of the current policy for implementing NBSs to overcome existing and future urban challenges.

Is Agent-Based Simulation a Valid Tool for Studying the Impact of Nature-Based Solutions on Local Economy? A Case Study of Four European Cities

Implementing nature-based solutions (NBSs) in cities, such as urban forests, can have multiple effects on the quality of life of inhabitants, acting on the mitigation of climate change, and in some cases also enhancing citizens’ social life and the transformation of customer patterns in commercial activities. Assessing this latter effect is the aim of this paper. An agent-based model (ABM) was used to assess change in commercial activities by small and midsize companies in retail due to the development of parks. The paper focuses on the potential capacity of NBS green spaces to boost retail companies’ business volumes, thus increasing their revenues, and at the same time create a pleasant feeling of space usability for the population. The type of NBS is not specified but generalized into large green spaces. The simulation contains two types of agents: (1) residents and (2) shop owners. Factors that attract new retail shops to be established in an area are simplified, based on attractor points, which identify areas such as large green spaces within and around which shops can form. The simulations provided insights on the number of retail shops that can be sustained based on the purchasing behavior of citizens that walk in parks. Four European cities were explored: Szeged (Hungary), Alcalá de Henares (Spain), Çankaya Municipality (Turkey) and Milan (Italy). The model allowed analyzing the indirect economic benefit of NBSs (i.e., large green spaces in this case) on a neighborhood’s economic structure. More precisely, the presence of green parks in the model boosted the visits of customers to local small shops located within and around them, such as cafés and kiosks, allowing for the emergence of 5–6 retail shops (on average, for about 800 walking citizens) in the case of Szeged and an average 12–14 retail shops for a simulated population of 2900 persons that walk in parks in the case of Milan. Overall, results from this modeling exercise can be considered representative for large urban green areas usually visited by a substantial number of citizens. However, their pertinence to support for local policies for NBS implementation and other decision-making related activities of socioeconomic nature is hampered by the low representativeness of source data used for the simulations.

Stakeholders’ Engagement on Nature-Based Solutions: A Systematic Literature Review

Cities are facing a broad range of social and environmental challenges due to the current pressure of global urbanization. Nature-based solutions aim to utilize green infrastructure to improve people’s health and wellbeing. The design of urban environments must embrace the individual ideals of citizens and stakeholders which can only be achieved if effective methods of communication, involvement, and feedback are ensured. Such a procedure creates trust during its implementation, helping to take ownership and stewardship of processes and sites. This systematic literature review explores the current state of the art regarding citizen and stakeholder participation in nature-based solutions (NBS). The search on the SCOPUS database identified 142 papers in total that met the inclusion criteria. The participation analysis was separated in two areas: (a) analysis of perceptions, preferences, and perspectives of citizens and stakeholders, and (b) analysis of the participation process, including challenges and opportunities, motivations, methods and frameworks, and collaborative governance. The results revealed that stakeholder and citizen participation or collaboration in nature-based solutions is increasingly recognized as promising; however, research in several related domains is still lacking.

Special Issue: Landscape Urbanism and Green Infrastructure

With the notion of landscape urbanism long neglected, interlinkages between ecology and architecture in the built environment are becoming visible. Yet, the diversity in understandings of the interconnections between cities and nature is the starting point for our research interest. This volume contains nine thoroughly refereed contributions concerning a wide range of topics in landscape architecture and urban green infrastructure. While some papers attempt to conceptualize the relation further, others clearly have an empirical focus. Thereby, this special issue provides a rich body of work, and will act as a starting point for further studies on biophilic urbanism and integrative policies, such as the sustainable development goals of the United Nations.