Creating a Map of the Social Functions of Urban Green Spaces in a City with Poor Availability of Spatial Data: A Sociotope for Lodz

Human Flow Dataset Reveals Changes in Citizens' Outing Behaviors including Greenspace Visits before and during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Kanazawa, Japan

Greenspaces, including parks, provide various socio-ecological benefits such as for aesthetics, temperature remediation, biodiversity conservation, and outdoor recreation. The health benefits of urban greenspaces have received particular attention since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has triggered various movement restrictions and lifestyle changes, including regarding the frequency of people's visits to greenspaces. Using mobile-tracking GPS data of Kanazawa citizens, we explored how citizens' behaviors with respect to outings changed before and during Japan's declaration of a COVID-19 state of emergency (April-May 2020). We also examined citizens' greenspace visits in relation to their travel distance from home. We found that Kanazawa citizens avoided going out during the pandemic, with a decrease in the number, time, and distance of outings. As for the means of transportation, the percentage of outings by foot increased on both weekdays and holidays. While citizens refrained from going out, the percentage change of the percentage in large greenspace visits increased very slightly in 2020. As for greenspace visitation in 2020 compared to 2019, we found that citizens generally visited greenspaces closer to their homes, actually increasing visitation of nearby (within 1000 m) greenspaces. This study of how outing behaviors and greenspace use by Kanazawa citizens have changed underscores the value of nearby greenspaces for physical and mental health during movement restrictions under the pandemic.

Evaluating Urban Green Public Spaces: The Case Study of Krasnodar Region Cities, Russia

The 21st century challenges, in particular those of climate change, population growth, air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic global health crisis, demand greater emphasis on infrastructure facilities capable of keeping pace with population needs in well-being, health and economic prosperity. Green infrastructure aimed to intensify ecological processes in built-up areas and deliver vital ecosystem services is of a key significance for Russia, one of the most urbanized countries in the world. The article is dedicated to the issue of providing cities sustainability through creating a basic element of the urban green infrastructure—a public green network—by incorporating and linking a variety of already existing urban environmental components, both spatial and linear, such as natural areas, squares, parks, streets, boulevards, embankments and others. The territory of the case study is Krasnodar region located in the southwestern part of the North Caucasus, the warmest region of Russia characterized by highly varied urban areas. The authors propose the multiple criteria method for evaluating the existing GreenPS and creating a GreenPS framework for six cities located in Krasnodar region both on the southern seaward part and on the northern steppe part. This approach is focused on the sustainable development of the cities, adaptation to climate change and the prevention of local risks with respect to the preservation of ecosystem functions and cultural heritage. The methodology includes three stages: investigating and evaluating the present state of the existing urban GreenPS; defining sustainability potential; and the submission of master plan proposals for the improvement and further development and management of the GreenPS network implementing nature-based solutions. In addition, it follows seven main integral criteria, namely, Accessibility, Density, Sufficiency, Continuity, Diversity, Value and Clean and Sanitary, illustrated by ray diagrams. The results of the study show good potential for construction in Krasnodar region cities of an efficient GreenPS network integrating ecological and social city components. The flexibility of the method proposed makes it replicable for any other city aimed at creating a GreenPS network in sustainable, climate-change-adapted cities.

Between Consultation and Collaboration: Self-Reported Objectives for 25 Web-Based Geoparticipation Projects in Urban Planning

Web-based participatory mapping technologies are being increasingly harnessed by local governments to crowdsource local knowledge and engage the public in urban planning policies as a means of increasing the transparency and legitimacy of planning processes and decisions. We refer to these technologies as “geoparticipation”. Current innovations are outpacing research into the use of geoparticipation in participatory planning practices. To address this knowledge gap, this paper investigates the objectives of web-based geoparticipation and uses empirical evidence from online survey responses related to 25 urban planning projects in nine countries across three continents (Europe, North America, and Australia). The survey adopts the objectives of the Spectrum for Public Participation that range from information empowerment, with each category specifying promises about how public input is expected to influence decision-making (IAP2, 2018). Our findings show that geoparticipation can leverage a ‘middle-ground’ of citizen participation by facilitating involvement alongside consultation and/or collaboration. This paper constitutes a pilot study as a step toward more robust and replicable empirical studies for cross-country comparisons. Empowerment (or citizen control) is not yet a normative goal or outcome for web-based geoparticipation. Our evidence also suggests that information is pursued alongside other objectives for citizen participation, and therefore functions not as a “low-hanging fruit” as portrayed in the literature, but rather as a core component of higher intensities of participation.

How Is Urban Greenness Spatially Associated with Dockless Bike Sharing Usage on Weekdays, Weekends, and Holidays?

Dockless bike sharing plays an important role in residents’ daily travel, traffic congestion, and air pollution. Recently, urban greenness has been proven to be associated with bike sharing usage around metro stations using a global model. However, their spatial associations and bike sharing usage on public holidays have seldom been explored in previous studies. In this study, urban greenness was obtained objectively using eye-level greenness with street-view images by deep learning segmentation and overhead view greenness from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Geographically weighted regression (GWR) was applied to fill the research gap by exploring the spatially varying association between dockless bike sharing usage on weekdays, weekends, and holidays, and urban greenness indicators as well as other built environment factors. The results showed that eye-level greenness was positively associated with bike sharing usage on weekdays, weekends, and holidays. Overhead-view greenness was found to be negatively related to bike usage on weekends and holidays, and insignificant on weekdays. Therefore, to promote bike sharing usage and build a cycling-friendly environment, the study suggests that the relevant urban planner should pay more attention to eye-level greenness exposure along secondary roads rather than the NDVI. Most importantly, planning implications varying across the study area during different days were proposed based on GWR results. For example, the improvement of eye-level greenness might effectively promote bike usage in northeastern and southern Futian districts and western Nanshan on weekdays. It also helps promote bike usage in Futian and Luohu districts on weekends, and in southern Futian and southeastern Nanshan districts on holidays.

Urban Green Spaces—An Underestimated Resource in Third-Tier Towns in Poland

Urban green spaces are frequently presented as being important for urban quality of life and urban development in general, but more detailed interpretations and discussions are typically confined to large urban centers, the so-called first- and second-tier cities. Not enough attention has been paid to smaller urban units, the third-tier towns. The main goal of this article is to investigate the share and types of urban green spaces in five selected towns in Poland. We compare different sources of data based on satellite imagery and land-use maps with those used in public statistics, to check whether town authorities are managing all potential green spaces or only a selected part of them. We find that the predominantly used data, based on what is classified as “urban green space” for the purposes of public statistics, obscure the complexity of urban green spaces and focus on the narrowly understood formally managed public green spaces (which occupy 3.5–5.7% of town areas). Meanwhile, based on other sources, such as the national land-use map (BDOT10k), Urban Atlas, and satellite imagery (Landsat 8), what is considered to be green space turns out to cover 50–80% of the town area. The latter large numbers are associated with the predominance of arable land, grasslands, and forests, overlooked in any green space management practices based on data and definitions adopted for the purposes of public statistics. The situation found in our five case study towns resembles that identified in larger cities in Poland, and it exhibits the inadequacy of public statistics definitions and the related management practices, hindering the management of urban green spaces as an interconnected system of urban green infrastructures.