A hybrid scale to relate natural and built environments: a pragmatic approach to sustainable cities

ABSTRACT

Urbanization is an irreversible and dynamic process which affects the availability and quality of ecosystem services (ESs). The link between balanced urban growth and ESs is critical for sustainable urban development. The study followed pluralist approach for evaluating and comparing the land-cover-based economic assessment of sustainable, moderately sustainable, and unsustainable cities. The artificial intelligence-based future land cover changes were evaluated using geographic future land use simulation software with geographic information system. A case-specific modification of value coefficients for computing ecosystem service value (ESV) was applied on case cities. A workable scale was developed by exploring relation of ESs and built-up of three extreme cases. The scale has different combinations of ESs and built-up from worst to best scenario with related ESV changes for optimal utilization of land. The scale helped to assess the spatial resource and natural capital balance of any area. The results showed that the ideal ratio of ESs and built-up density range for balanced sustainable development is between 1.35 and 3.64 with ESVs between INR 10.00 million/hectare and INR 8.45 million/hectare, respectively. On applying the scale, the results showed that only 25% of the city peripheral area comes under ideal range. The study will help urban planners in conservation of ESs with economic development for promoting sustainable urban development.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• ecosystem service value (ESV)
• land degradation neutrality (LDN)
• natural resource management
• healthy built environment
• sustainable urban development

Article highlights

1. Hybrid AI tool applied for simulating urban growth scenarios.

2. Land cover modifications are associated with ESV losses.

3. Case-specific modifications in Costanza ecosystem coefficients were applied.

4. Formation of a scale that correlates built-up and ES density changes with ESV.

5. Finding temporal ESV losses of case city using the scale.

List of Abbreviations

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the reviewers and editors for guiding us in improving and enhancing the level of manuscript. We want to thank our institution ‘Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal’ for providing us resources and opportunity for conducting this research.

Disclosure statement

This is to acknowledge that no financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of our research.

Author submission history

The manuscript ‘A hybrid scale to relate natural and built environments: A pragmatic approach to sustainable cities’ is the original work submitted by me. I assert that the results of this paper have never been previously submitted in any other journals.

Author’s contributions

All authors have contributed equally to the paper.

Compliance report

We thank the editor and reviewers for providing their valuable time, effort, and an opportunity to improve our manuscript. We have tried our best to satisfy the queries.

Availability of data and material

All the data and material were presented in this paper.