Assessing impacts on urban greenspace, waterways, and vegetation in urban planning

Abstract

Parks, waterways, and vegetation enhance the well-being of urbanites and thus warrant consideration in planning and policy-making. It is, however, difficult to assess how land-use change may impact these features and how this in turn may impact well-being. I use a case-study approach to present a framework that combines geospatial and economic valuation techniques to generate indicators of the effects of land-use policies that alter these amenities on community well-being. This framework quantifies the impacts of land-use change on urban environmental amenities in a way that could help communities plan land use so as to maintain well-being as they urbanise.

Keywords:

• urban green space
• urban vegetation
• urban water
• land-use change
• urban planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2015. 1017041.