Speaker
Description
Equity and inclusiveness are two of the main goals of sustainable urban development, which help achieving resilient cities. The elements of urban green infrastructure, comprising green spaces and nature—based solutions, represent an important tool for creating sustainable and resilient cities. The inclusion of equity aspects related to urban green infrastructure in strategic urban planning documents should increase the pace of their implementation.
The analysis explores if and how equity is discussed by strategic planning documents in Romania in relation to urban green infrastructure planning. The analysis is comprised by 2 steps: (1) we used around 240 urban strategic plans to investigate which aspects of environmental justice (availability, accessibility, attractiveness, safety, walkability, and affordability) are discussed in relation to urban green spaces and which vulnerable groups (e.g. children, elderly, youth, sick people) represent a priority in planning and (2) we focused on a sample of 18 cities for which 3 generations of strategic plans were available and analyzed the potential changes in urban green space management using a framework centered on five dimensions related to the quality of the plans - communication-oriented, evidence-based, collaborative, adaptive and action-oriented aspects.
The results highlights that the most discussed aspects in strategic urban planning documents in Romania in relation to urban green spaces are those related to availability and attractiveness and the most targeted vulnerable group is represented by children. There is a small increase of the documents quality over time in relation to the way in which green spaces are planned and equity and inclusiveness aspects addressed.
| Keywords | equity; urban green spaces; strategic planning; vulnerable groups |
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