Journal: Landscape and Urban Planning

Abbreviation

Landsc. urban plan.

Publisher

Elsevier

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ISSN

0169-2046
1872-6062

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Publications 1 - 10 of 45
  • Does rated visual landscape quality match visual features? An analysis for renewable energy landscapes
    Item type: Journal Article
    Spielhofer, Reto; Hunziker, Marcel; Kienast, Felix; et al. (2021)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    Finding the “right” sites for developing renewable energy systems (RES) is one of the major challenges in planning strategies for energy transitions. The visibility aspects of such infrastructure are important factors that explain local opposition. Classical visibility and viewshed analyses of RES disregard people’s perceptions and estimations of new infrastructure. To address this void, we demonstrate an approach that combines rated visual landscape qualities with measured visual features. In doing so, we established visual stimuli with systematically controlled visual impact scenarios featuring the use of renewables in different landscape types. The study investigated how ratings of landscape qualities are affected by landscape changes stemming from RES. We also identified measurable visual features that might help to operationalize landscape qualities. Finally, we intended to improve the understand of how rated landscape qualities lead to preferences for different RES visual impact scenarios. Our results showed that rated coherence is strongly influenced by renewable energy infrastructure, whereas complexity ratings are affected mainly by variations in landscape types. These findings let us to conclude that the visual understanding and visual connectedness between energy systems and surrounding landscapes are core drivers of people’s visual preferences for landscapes altered with RES. Considering landscape qualities within impact assessments of RES can augment our grasp of how the visual character of a landscape changes through renewable energy infrastructure.
  • Impacts of population density and wealth on the quantity and structure of urban green space in tropical Southeast Asia
    Item type: Journal Article
    Richards, Daniel R.; Passy, Paul; Oh, Rachel R.Y. (2017)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
  • Relative importance of quantitative and qualitative aspects of urban green spaces in promoting health
    Item type: Journal Article
    Zhang, Liqing; Tan, Puay Y.; Richards, Daniel (2021)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    The health benefits of urban green spaces (UGS) are important considerations in the design of urban environments. Researchers have analysed how the quantity of UGS impacts health outcomes, but less work has quantified the relative health benefits of different components of UGS provision. We examined the associations of different indicators of UGS provision with self-reported mental and general health based on a national representative household survey (n = 1000) in Singapore. We quantified three quantitative attributes of UGS (vegetation cover, canopy cover, park area) using Geographic Information System (GIS) data and measured visual greenness using the Green View Index (GVI) based on Google Street View panoramic images. We measured the subjective attributes of UGS, namely, usage quality and quantity of UGS within a 400 m circular buffer zone of residences using the survey. Among all the UGS indicators at the 400 m scale, only canopy cover and perceived usage quality were significantly associated with positive mental health, whereas none of the UGS indicators were related to general health. For visual greenness at different distance scales, there was a significant relationship between the indicator calculated by the sum of GVI at a 100 m scale and mental health. Canopy cover at a 400 m scale had a stronger correlation with mental health than perceived usage quality of nearby UGS and visual greenness at a 100 m scale. The findings highlight the importance of measuring both objective and subjective attributes of UGS provision and provide useful information for urban greening.
  • A prototypical tool for normative landscape scenario development and the analysis of actors' policy preferences
    Item type: Journal Article
    Celio, Enrico; Ott, Michel; Sirén, Elina; et al. (2015)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
  • Integrating ecosystem services into spatial planning—A spatial decision support tool
    Item type: Journal Article
    Grêt-Regamey, Adrienne; Altwegg, Jürg; Sirén, Elina A.; et al. (2017)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    Urbanization is viewed as endangering more critical habitats of global value and is more ubiquitous than any other human activity affecting biodiversity, climate, water and nutrient cycles at multiple scales. Spatial and landscape planning can help create alternative urban patterns protecting ecosystems and thus supporting the provision of needed services they provide. While many approaches exist to make the values of nature explicit, new tools are needed to interpret the vast quantity of information in an integrated assessment to support planning. In this study, we present a new spatial decision support tool PALM (“Potential Allocation of urban development areas for sustainable Land Management”) aimed at supporting the allocation of urban development zones. A GIS-based MCDA approach was integrated into a web-based platform that allows distributing a requested amount of urban development areas within a selected perimeter based on ecosystem services and locational factors. The short running time of different user-defined scenarios allows exploring consequences and tradeoffs between decisions in an interactive way, thus making it a useful tool to support discussions in participatory planning processes. The results of the application of PALM in a case study region in Switzerland show that integrating ecosystem services when distributing urban development areas is particularly effective in urban peripheries, where building zones are shifted towards urban centers securing the productive soils located around cities. This shift of building zones from the urban peripheries to the urban centers when considering ecosystem services is less pronounced in rural areas, as they provide fewer ecosystem services. However, the results also show that integrating ecosystem services in spatial planning needs to be embedded in the right policy context: Ecosystem services can only be traded-off for locational factors if the perimeter of the case study ranges across municipalities. Whereas this transparent and flexible platform offers a suitable tool at the beginning of a planning process, we also discuss further development needs.
  • Does geo-located social media reflect the visit frequency of urban parks? A city-wide analysis using the count and content of photographs
    Item type: Journal Article
    Song, Xiao Ping; Richards, Daniel R.; He, Peijun; et al. (2020)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    Given the importance of parks and green spaces for outdoor recreation in cities, numerous studies have attempted to describe patterns of usage and understand their determining factors. Recently, social media has emerged as a potentially valuable tool to examine people’s use of parks. This study examines park use in Singapore based on the count and visual content of photographs geo-located within parks. Measures of park use—the number of photo-user-days (PUD)—derived from 325,173 and 94,890 photographs on the respective platforms Instagram and Flickr were compared with results from household surveys (n = 2000). We analysed the spatial attributes of parks and their relationships with PUD at an aggregated-level, and for content categories on the Flickr platform produced by automated classification: birds, wildlife, plants, flowers, recreation, water/skyscapes. In contrast to studies of large national parks, we found that PUD at city parks reflected residents’ preferences better than their frequency of visits to parks, and that park size had a limited effect on PUD. Some relationships were specific to a particular platform; Instagram users were more likely to upload photographs at parks that were closer to the coast and with more canopy cover, while Flickr users tended to do so at parks with an event space and that had lower-density housing nearby. We conclude that social media can provide reasonable assessments of park popularity, but future studies need to consider scale-effects, the integration of data sources for better accuracy, as well as a diversity of goals beyond park use.
  • Community-driven skyrise greenery in a dense tropical city provides biodiversity and ecosystem service benefits
    Item type: Journal Article
    Oh, Rachel R.Y.; Richards, Daniel R.; Yee, Alex T.K. (2018)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
  • Understanding the value of urban riparian corridors: Considerations in planning for cultural services along an Indonesian river
    Item type: Journal Article
    Vollmer, Derek; Prescott, Michaela F.; Padawangi, Rita; et al. (2015)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
  • The role of greenness and road traffic noise for psychological restoration in everyday environments. A participatory mapping approach
    Item type: Journal Article
    García-Martín, María; Kolecka, Natalia; Hunziker, Marcel; et al. (2025)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    Greenness and noise are important environmental determinants of human health. The rapid urbanization and population growth have intensified the densification of urban environments, escalating traffic noise and the depletion of green spaces. Our study aims to explore the role of greenness as a facilitator and noise exposure as an impediment to psychological restoration in people's daily environments, examining the interplay between environmental factors, individual perceptions, and personal traits. We employ a conceptual model where the effects of road traffic noise and greenness on restoration are mediated by perceived landscape factors and moderated by personal traits. We collected data through an online participatory survey of about 1500 Swiss respondents. Respondents were asked to indicate the level of restoration they obtained from looking out of their window at home and from their last restorative outdoor activity. Our analysis combines biophysical and acoustical georeferenced data with perceived survey data and uses multiple mediation analysis technics, i.e., structural equation modelling. Results indicate that greenness and traffic noise exposure are only marginally linked to psychological restoration outcomes. However, they are strongly associated with perceived landscape aspects, such as the feeling of being in nature and noise annoyance, which in turn are linked to these outcomes. Personal traits, including connectedness with nature and stress levels, also play a critical role in shaping restoration outcomes. Our study highlights the complex dynamics between environmental factors, personal perceptions, and restoration outcomes, emphasizing the pivotal role of perceived feeling of being in nature and personal traits in psychological restoration.
  • Degree of urbanization influences the persistence of Dorytomus weevils (Coleoptera: Curculionoidae) in Beijing, China
    Item type: Journal Article
    Huang, Dingcheng; Su, Zhimin; Zhang, Runzhi; et al. (2010)
    Landscape and Urban Planning
    As degree of urbanization continues to increase, a better understanding of the relationship between degree of urbanization and level of biodiversity is important for developing strategies to mitigate detrimental impacts of urbanization and to build sustainable cities. Dorytomus Gemar weevils are host specific on Salix L. and Populus L. trees which are commonly used for urban afforesting and greening and abundant in Beijing metropolitan area which can be divided into five concentric zones. We aim to reveal their distribution pattern and identify important determinants of their persistence in those zones. Our results showed that Dorytomus species number and abundance decreased gradually from outskirt to urban center. This pattern could be predicted by built-up ratio within 1–3 km, distance to urban centre and to a possible nearest population source in outskirt, but not by hostplant species number and abundance, habitat size and shape measured at habitat scale. The results indicate that (i) there is a negative relationship between degree of urbanization and Dorytomus species persistence in urban areas; (ii) efforts for Dorytomus weevil conservation should not only focus on remnant revegetation, but also be directed to regulate the ratio of built-up area and minimize isolation from nearby occupied patches; and (iii) built-up ratio in inner city should be lower as urban sprawls. To better understand the relationship between urbanization degree and species persistence and to offer realistic suggestions for urban landscape planners, further research involving multiple taxa and the synthesis of the ecological responses of different taxonomical groups are needed.
Publications 1 - 10 of 45