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Remotely-sensed land use map for Strasbourg (France). Green spaces of the urban community of Strasboug: classified and homogenized image.
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... of the main characteristics of the BUGS methodology is its multidisciplinary nature, which was required from the outset in order to establish a truly integrated methodology. While being an obvious asset, this multidisciplinarity also represents a major challenge as the methodology is based on an intensive and complex exchange of data between methods and models of very different varieties. In the following section, the components constituting BUGS and their interactions are described in more detail, and preliminary results are shown. The BUGS methodology heavily relies on an urban planning method that specifically accounts for urban green space and which is particularly designed to favour participatory planning techniques. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology is used to create maps containing urban density indicators and other relevant parameters, their main objective being to investigate the possibilities of combining green and compact urban structures in a city. These maps are then used to identify zones where urban green enhancements are possible and desirable. An example of such a map is shown in Fig. 2, which contains the accessibility of urban green zones. The urban planning maps, apart from providing other components of the methodology with required input data, are also used to establish a dialogue with local communities. In close relationship with the planning activities are those dealing with remote sensing. High-resolu- tion satellite and aircraft imageries are used to pro- vide maps containing parameters required in the planning process, such as urban geometry and the location and quality of green areas. Furthermore, the remotely sensed maps allow the derivation of certain social indicators, such as the accessibility of urban green space. Finally, remote sensing is used to generate maps of physical parameters, such as frac- tional green vegetation cover and street geometry, which are required in the environmental models. Fig. 3 shows an example of land use derived from SPOT imagery. As car traffic takes a large share in the environmental burden experienced in urban regions, particular care is devoted to the simulation of traffic flow and associated pollutant emissions. The models used to simulate traffic flow and emissions are flexible, to the extent that they are capable of simulating alterations induced by a modified urban structure. Fig. 4 gives ...
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... quality of green areas. Furthermore, the remotely sensed maps allow the derivation of certain social indicators, such as the accessibility of urban green space. Finally, remote sensing is used to generate maps of physical parameters, such as frac- tional green vegetation cover and street geometry, which are required in the environmental models. Fig. 3 shows an example of land use derived from SPOT ...
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Studies for the conservation of historic environments have evolved from the conservation of only physical properties to an inclusive conservation approach concerning cultural properties. The significance of the cultural aspects of historic environments has been realized and discussed especially since 1950-1960s. Despite of an increasing awareness o...
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... Natural environments have repeatedly been reported to be more beneficial for mental health than urban environments (e.g., [1,2]). Similarly, natural elements in urban settings are associated with better mental health (e.g., [10,11]). Another aspect of urbanization is that more and more time is spent indoors. ...
... We also calculated spatial properties for each window view image, namely, entropy and edge density measures (confer [25]) as well as fractal dimension [29,59]. 10. Entropy is a measure of the average information content of an image. ...
Previous studies have shown that natural window views are beneficial for mental health, but it is still unclear which specific features constitute a ‘natural’ window view. On the other hand, studies on image analysis found that low-level visual features (LLVFs) are associated with perceived naturalness, but mainly conducted experiments with brief stimulus presentations. In this study, research on the effects of window views on mental health was combined with the detailed analysis of LLVFs. Healthy adults rated window views from their home and sent in photographs of those views for analysis. Content validity of the ‘ecological’ view assessment was evaluated by checking correlations of LLVFs with window view ratings. Afterwards, it was explored which of the LLVFs best explained variance in perceived percentage of nature and man-made elements, and in ratings of view quality. Criterion validity was tested by investigating which variables were associated with negative affect and impulsive decision-making. The objective and subjective assessments of nature/sky in the view were aligned but objective brightness was unreliable. The perceived percentage of nature was significantly explained by green pixel ratio, while view quality was associated with fractals, saturation, sky pixel ratio and straight edge density. The higher subjective brightness of rooms was associated with a lower negative affect, whereas results for impulsive decision-making were inconsistent. The research highlights the validity to apply LLVFs analysis to ecological window views. For affect, subjective brightness seemed to be more relevant than LLVFs. For impulsive decision-making, performance context needs to be controlled in future studies.
... When urban activities are concentrated intensely and landscape alterations occur rapidly, the challenges of public safety and ecological sustainability can compromise the urban development framework. This degradation impacts the efficiency of urban functions and the living standards of residents, thereby posing substantial threats to human societal progress [5]. ...
The rapid urbanization process means that even moderate-sized cities can quickly become part of larger urban agglomerations, creating new urban zones. Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) plays a crucial role in these clusters, acting as precious green spaces essential for maintaining ecological safety. This study combines fluctuation analysis based on Morphological Spatial Pattern with traditional landscape pattern analysis, comprehensively addressing the evolution of UGI in terms of quantity, characteristics, and morphology. We selected the Taiyuan-Jinzhong agglomeration as our study area, which is currently in an agglomeration process. The results demonstrated the critical role of surrounding mountains as natural ecological barrier zones. During urban agglomeration, management strategies focused on large-scale afforestation to ensure the quantity of UGI. However, this approach also led to a more clustered landscape with reduced connectivity. Additionally, linear or small-scale UGI types such as branch and islet have seen reductions over the past decade. Changes in internal morphological and complex fluctuations within UGI can harm the formation of ecological networks and potentially negatively affect biodiversity and ecological safety. The research highlights how ecological protection and urban planning policies can influence UGI fluctuations. Therefore, urban managers should not just concentrate on maintaining the quantity of UGI, but also give consideration to changes in its internal features and morphology. Before cities further agglomerate into larger urban clusters, it is crucial to address deficiencies in UGI, continuously improving type configurations and functional structures at the landscape scale. Through strategic planning of UGI, cities can mitigate ecological risks and foster sustainable urban development.
... Additionally, urban parks are extremely beneficial for ameliorating population health (Nutsford, Pearson, & Kingham, 2013;Zhang, van Dijk, Tang, & van den Berg, 2015): thus, some studies show their positive effects such as increasing the level of physical activity, psychological well-being (Lee & Maheswaran, 2011;Tinsley, H.E.A, Tinsley, Tinsley, & Croskeys, 2002), reducing obesity (Toftager et al., 2011;Wolch et al., 2011) or diminishing the level of stress (Fan, Y., Das, K.V., Chen, Q., 2011;Ward Thompson et al., 2012). Urban parks also help improve air and water quality (Wu & Rowe, 2022;Wu, Xie, Li, W., & Li, J., 2015), reduce noise (De Ridder et al., 2004), pollution and erosion (Gill, Handley, Ennos, & Pauleit, 2007), moderate the climate, while also being true hotspots of urban biodiversity (De Toledo, Donatelli, & Batista, 2011;Lin, Sun, & Hung, 2008). Through the many ecosystem services they provide, urban parks generally increase the quality of life of the inhabitants (Chiesura, 2004;Dai, 2011;Jalkanen, Fabritius, Vierikko, Moilanen, & Toivonen, 2020;Shan, 2014;Smith, Case, Smith, Harwell, & Summers, 2013;Xing, Liu, & Liu, 2018;Zhang, Yue, Fan, & Gao, 2021). ...
Green space accessibility is an important component of life quality, due to the many benefits it brings to human communities. This aspect is especially relevant in urban environments, which are characterized by a high density of residential and commercial buildings, as well as by higher levels of pollution (especially air and noise pollution) caused mainly by transportation or industrial activities. Thus, city inhabitants must have good access to green spaces, where they can enjoy peace, tranquility, clean air, vegetation and which if properly equipped, will allow them to carry out multiple recreational, sporting, social and cultural activities. This study reveals accessibility levels to urban parks in the city of Constanța, calculated in a GIS environment using the Balanced Floating Catchment Area (BFCA) approach on three distance thresholds: 400 m, 800 m and 1200 m. The results of this study reveal both low general values and important territorial differentiations regarding the accessibility of urban parks. The highest level of accessibility was observed for the 400 m threshold, while the lowest level was observed for the 1200 m threshold. These aspects can have important implications in the process of sustainable urban planning of a city that encouraged residential construction (19.1% increase from 1990 to 2021) at the expense of green spaces and the quality of life of its inhabitants.
... (Dong et al., 2022;Lopes and Camanho, 2013). UGS underpin the ecological, social, and economic vitality of cities, acting as the lungs of urban areas, enhancing air quality (De Ridder et al., 2004), reducing the impact of urban heat islands , promoting biodiversity (Faeth et al., 2011), supporting social cohesion (Mouratidis and Poortinga, 2020), and offering recreational havens for city residents (Park and Ewing, 2017). Such knowledge is essential for urban planning and development towards social and environmental sustainability. ...
... participatory mapping to produce a hotspot layer of stakeholder-supported sites to build on the RSM. Participatory mapping draws on the spatial knowledge of local communities, to identify conflicts between human-use and conservation (Alexander et al., 2012) and to identify priority areas for restoration (De Ridder et al., 2004;Strain et al., 2019b;Van Den Berg et al., 2007). The process of engaging and extracting information from interested and hard to access groups through participatory mapping assists in identifying key community concerns and perceptions, such that these can be appropriately managed in the project design and communications. ...
Stakeholder support is critical to the success of ecological restoration projects, and consultation with multiple user groups is increasingly a requirement of permitting agencies. Despite this, participatory mapping remains a “missing layer” in spatial planning of restoration projects. We used site selection for oyster reef restoration in Sydney Harbour as a case study to assess how GIS-based habitat suitability modelling might be adapted to consider not only biophysical data and conflicting estuarine use, but also stakeholder support and engagement. Specifically, we compared the outcomes of suitability modelling that; (1) considered only biophysical parameters that influence habitat suitability for native oyster species; (2) included conflicting estuarine uses to negate social conflict, and habitat connectivity to promote ecological synergies; and (3) incorporated stakeholder perspectives through the integration of participatory mapping. Models that only applied biophysical parameters indicated 43–93% (depending on native oyster species) of Sydney Harbour would be more than moderately suitable for native oyster reef restoration. When conflicting estuarine uses and habitat connectivity were included, this value fell to 11% across native oysters. The inclusion of stakeholder perspectives further reduced suitability to 7%. Our study showed that selecting sites for ecological restoration based solely on biophysical suitability for the target species potentially overestimates the area suitable for restoration and therefore increases the probability of project failure, particularly in sites where stakeholders are not as supportive as anticipated. This study demonstrates how traditional habitat suitability modelling can be enhanced through the inclusion of additional data on human activities and stakeholder support. Importantly, it provides a template by which stakeholders can be engaged early in the restoration project planning process and inspire local communities to play a more active role in restoration activities.
... (Dong et al., 2022;Lopes and Camanho, 2013). UGS underpin the ecological, social, and economic vitality of cities, acting as the lungs of urban areas, enhancing air quality (De Ridder et al., 2004), reducing the impact of urban heat islands , promoting biodiversity (Faeth et al., 2011), supporting social cohesion (Mouratidis and Poortinga, 2020), and offering recreational havens for city residents (Park and Ewing, 2017). Such knowledge is essential for urban planning and development towards social and environmental sustainability. ...
... UGS is one of the important components of the urban ecosystem and plays an important role in ecological environment, public health, social economy, and other aspects [1][2][3][4]. In recent years, to promote sustainable planetary health, providing balanced UGS resources for urban residents has become an increasingly important goal for governments and institutions at all levels around the world [5,6]. ...
The comprehensive use of high-resolution remote sensing (HRS) images and deep learning (DL) methods can be used to further accurate urban green space (UGS) mapping. However, in the process of UGS segmentation, most of the current DL methods focus on the improvement of the model structure and ignore the spectral information of HRS images. In this paper, a multiscale attention feature aggregation network (MAFANet) incorporating feature engineering was proposed to achieve segmentation of UGS from HRS images (GaoFen-2, GF-2). By constructing a new decoder block, a bilateral feature extraction module, and a multiscale pooling attention module, MAFANet enhanced the edge feature extraction of UGS and improved segmentation accuracy. By incorporating feature engineering, including false color image and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), MAFANet further distinguished UGS boundaries. The UGS labeled datasets, i.e., UGS-1 and UGS-2, were built using GF-2. Meanwhile, comparison experiments with other DL methods are conducted on UGS-1 and UGS-2 to test the robustness of the MAFANet network. We found the mean Intersection over Union (MIOU) of the MAFANet network on the UGS-1 and UGS-2 datasets was 72.15% and 74.64%, respectively; outperforming other existing DL methods. In addition, by incorporating false color image in UGS-1, the MIOU of MAFANet was improved from 72.15% to 74.64%; by incorporating vegetation index (NDVI) in UGS-1, the MIOU of MAFANet was improved from 72.15% to 74.09%; and by incorporating false color image and the vegetation index (NDVI) in UGS-1, the MIOU of MAFANet was improved from 72.15% to 74.73%. Our experimental results demonstrated that the proposed MAFANet incorporating feature engineering (false color image and NDVI) outperforms the state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods in UGS segmentation, and the false color image feature is better than the vegetation index (NDVI) for enhancing green space information representation. This study provided a practical solution for UGS segmentation and promoted UGS mapping.
... In addition to examining the demand side, the supply side of green space services is also considered, specifically the volume of services that green spaces can provide and their degree of utilization. Studies often explore the supply-demand relationship between green spaces and urban residents in terms of green space accessibility [2], exposure to green environments [3], ecological and social service benefits [4][5][6], spatial layout characteristics [7,8], and comprehensive benefit assessment [9,10]. These investigations help identify blind spots in green space resource services [11] and ecologically vulnerable areas [12], leading to the proposal of corresponding optimization strategies. ...
The degree of coordination between the supply and demand for urban green spaces serves as a vital metric for evaluating urban ecological development and the well-being of residents. An essential principle in assessing this coordination is the precise quantification of both the demand and supply of green spaces, as well as the differential representation of their spatiotemporal structures. This study utilizes the entropy weight method (EWM) and principal component analysis (PCA) to comprehensively measure supply indicators for green space quantity and quality in the central urban area of Shenyang, China. To establish reliable and quantifiable demand indicators, mobile signaling spatial-temporal data are corrected by incorporating static population cross-sectional data. The Gaussian two-step floating catchment area method (Ga2SFCA) is employed to calculate the accessibility of green spaces in each community with ArcGIS 10.2 software, while the Gini coefficient is utilized to assess the equity of green space distribution within the study area. This study employs location entropy to determine the levels of supply and demand for green spaces in each subdistrict. Furthermore, the priority of community-scale green space regulation is accurately determined by balancing vulnerable areas of green space supply and replenishing green space resources for the ageing population. The findings suggest a Gini coefficient of 0.58 for the supply and demand of green spaces in Shenyang’s central metropolitan region, indicating a relatively low level of equalization in overall green space allocation. Based on location entropy, the classification of supply and demand at the street level yields the following outcomes: balanced areas comprise 21.98%, imbalanced areas account for 26.37%, and highly imbalanced regions represent 51.65%. After eliminating the balanced regions, the distribution of the elderly population is factored in, highlighting the spatial distribution and proportions of communities with distinct regulatory priorities: Level 1 (S1) constitutes 7.4%, Level 2 (S2) accounts for 60.9%, and Level 3 (S3) represents 31.7%. Notably, the communities in the S1 category exhibit spatial distribution characteristics of aggregation within the inner ring and the northern parts of the third ring. This precise identification of areas requiring urgent regulation and the spatial distribution of typical communities can provide reliable suggestions for prioritizing green space planning in an age-friendly city.
... Street trees constitute an integral part of a sustainable urban environment and have increasingly been recognized for their contributions to climate regulation, human health, and habitat improvement. Apart from their various ecosystem services that improve urban residents' quality of life (Bolund and Hunhammar, 1999;De Ridder et al., 2004;Elmqvist et al., 2013), street trees reduce stormwater run-off (Xiao and McPherson, 2002), mitigate urban heat-island effects (Qi et al., 2022a;Qi et al., 2023), promote soil consolidation and slope protection (Xiaogang, 2013), improve air quality (Beckett et al., 1998), reduce noise (Lohr et al., 2004), and enhance biodiversity (Villaseñor et al., 2021). Additionally, they enhance the aesthetics of urban landscapes and contribute to their cultural significance (Qi et al., 2022b). ...
Root damage from urban street trees represents a substantial concern arising from the conflict between root growth and limited growth spaces. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of root damage, which threatens the safety of urban facilities, appears to have received little scholarly attention. Moreover, the effectiveness of some proposed measures for root damage prevention and control has not yet received consistent evaluation. Accordingly, this review aims to examine root damage, including its causes and available prevention and control measures. Urban trees are found to have a high potential to exert root damage on infrastructures when the following factors exist. These include large and mature tree, fast-growing trees, trees planted in limited soil volumes, shallow-rooted tree with buttress roots, trees whose diameter at breast height exceeds 10 cm, old and cracked road paving, high soil surface moisture content, short distances between trees and sidewalks (<2 to 3 m), and underground pipes that are already broken and made of metals or stones. The phenotypic traits of trees may be the primary factor causing root damage when there is a mismatch between the root-soil requirements of urban street trees and the actual soil environment. The poor effectiveness of root damage prevention and control measures may be attributed to the lack of connection between the development of control measures and the mechanism of root damage.
... Based on the theory of environmental psychology, several studies suggested that urban greenery helps alleviate mental stress and encourages physical activity including bicycling (De Vries et al., 2013;Lu et al., 2019;Wang et al., 2019). Urban greenery provides shade and carbon sink capacity, reduces noise and air pollution, improves resident health, increases the comfort of bicycling trips, and promotes FFBS adoption (De Ridder et al., 2004;Dzhambov et al., 2018;Kong et al., 2014;Nowak and Crane, 2002). However, there are few large-scale studies on the influences of urban greenness on FFBS Gao et al., 2021a). ...
The free-floating bike-sharing system (FFBS) is an effective method of alleviating urban traffic congestion and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The present study used street view images and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to explore the influence of urban greenness on FFBS usage in Beijing, China. In a full sample Poisson model, FFBS usage at a given location would increase 1.003-fold for each unit increase in the greenery view index (GVI) at that location. However, NDVI was negatively associated with FFBS usage. The spatial distribution of urban functional areas was identified. It indicated that they moderated the relationship between urban greenness indices and FFBS usage. Several policy implications were proposed for promoting the level of urban greenness and encouraging the adoption of green travel modes such as FFBS.
