Progressing Green Infrastructure planning: understanding its scalar, temporal, geo-spatial and disciplinary evolution

ABSTRACT

Growing recognition has developed between policy-makers and practitioners that green infrastructure (GI) provides an approach to planning for effectively integrating ecosystems, biodiversity, socio-economic and political factors into a coherent framework for environmental management. While there has been progressive development of the concept, a deeper analysis demonstrates that this process has been disjointed. We identify four factors or ‘axes’ related to: temporal, geographic, scalar and disciplinary variation, which have shaped how GI is promoted and implemented. This paper traces coalescence and divergence across GI planning, using these four axes to map the concept’s development. It also questions whether the lack of alignment between GI research and Impact Assessment (IA) is grounded in existing disciplinary mentalities or related to governance or geographical variation. From this analysis, we identify that these factors interact with socio-political and economic drivers shaping the terminology used, but this is not translated into effective evaluative practice. Although flexibility is one of the main strengths of GI, we argue that some degree of harmonisation will help advance the use of GI in environmental planning and assessment.

KEYWORDS:

• Green infrastructure
• discourse coalitions
• advocacy
• consensus
• terminology

Notes

1. These locations have generated the most significant number of academic journal articles/outputs related to GI. A growing evidence base though is developing focusing on African and Latin American cities; however, GI research remains dominated by research focused on Northern Hemisphere examples (Kabisch et al. 2015).

2. Broad consensus suggests that Benedict & McMahon’s discussion of GI in 2002 was the first detailed articulation of the concept. However, former Governor of Maryland Parris Glendenning used the phrase in the late 1990s during his engagement with the President’s Commission on Sustainable Development (see Mell 2016 for further details). It was also used in the 1994 Florida Greenway Commission’s ‘Creating a Statewide Greenway System’ report but was not developed conceptually or in a practical/delivery sense.

3. Whilst it is acknowledged that Mexico is classified as part of the North American landmass, as well as being classified as part of Latin America, there is a limited literature examining GI (e.g. Calderón-Contreras and Quiroz-Rosas 2017.). Consequently, the use of North America in this paper refers to the established literature based in the USA and Canada.

4. Whilst Impact Assessment is an overarching term used to describe the impacts associated with specific developments or policy mandates, there are a number of types of assessment that provide a more focused evaluation of the physical environment, socio-economic systems, and human health. It can occur at multiple levels to evaluate policies, plans, and programmes or assess specific impacts of proposed projects. Examples of different assessments include Health Impact Assessment (HIA), Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Each has common elements but are flexible enough to address discreet issues across a range of contexts (Fischer 2010; Glasson and Threival 2013).

5. Implicit within these four axes is an understanding of historic changes/evolution in planning and management practices, socio-cultural and economic variation in approaches to landscape, and the role of political support/will in driving forward projects, programmes and policies related to GI (Robbins 2012). We acknowledge that each of these four axes is therefore subject to considerable change, however, from a review of the GI literature they remain the most prominent factors influencing its development.

6. The five main traditions of European planning thought are: British, East European, Germanic, Napoleonic and Scandinavian. However, there are ongoing discussions as to whether these five ‘traditions’ remain appropriate in contemporary European planning.

7. Cumulative value is a scalar issue, as the size of a GI resource does not necessarily align directly with its socio-economic or ecological value. Size is a relative factor in discussions of value, but there is a need to examine how the continuum of GI resources can provide multi-functionality (Davies et al. 2006). The ways in which values can be cumulatively developed therefore sit most easily within issues of scale.