Cultural ecosystem services along the Woluwe River: mapping the potential for a cross-regional green-blue network during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The cultural and social benefits of green open spaces (GOSs) are frequently disregarded in environmental planning and policy. The online PPGIS tool, mygreenplace.be, was used to map the cultural ecosystem services (CES) in the GOSs along the Woluwe River. This research aims to clarify the role of CES, spatial qualities and travel distance in GOSs’ valuation and their respective environmental planning and management. The analysis revealed that highly valued GOSs (CES hot spots) offer a diverse combination of CES, mainly activities related to playing and exercising, gathering and consuming. Likewise, these popular, highly valued GOSs provide various facilities enabling these activities (e.g. restaurants, water elements and transportation). Although travel distance proved quintessential for using GOSs, other factors, such as their qualities and attributes, can determine whether, and how frequently, respondents use a particular GOS. Finally, the data showed that the COVID-19 pandemic has positively influenced the use of and appreciation for GOSs.

Keywords:

• green open spaces
• cultural ecosystem services
• PPGIS
• COVID-19
• environmental planning

Acknowledgements

We, the authors, would like to thank Mr. Bart de Wit for his invaluable help in coding the tool that was the centerpiece of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Overpass turbo is a web-based data filtering tool for OpenStreetMap that allows an updated view of green open spaces that otherwise would be missed if using the official green space Flemish service “Groenkaart,” which dates from 2015.

2 Note that this is from respondents without duplicates generated by the municipal divisions. Given the nature of the GOS polygon, there were several cases where a respondent marked a GOS that extended beyond the limits of a municipality. In this case, there would be two IDs for that specific GOS section, each corresponding to the municipality in which it is located, and thus the marking made by one respondent would also be counted twice. For the purpose of these figures, however, we report respondents count without these duplications.

Additional information

Funding

This study is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 765389, RECOMS.