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2022
- Research article
by
1Department of Landscape Architecture, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, 119 Meyerson Hall, 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA19104-6311, USA
- Volume 112 Issue 4
- Pages: 133
- - 150
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221124-08
The decisions regarding urban greening should include the quantified estimate of the points where vegetation–health associations turn towards urbanization, what physical health outcomes have the most prominent direction, and whether the near-home vegetation is different from that outside one’s living environment. The proximity gradient, allowing for preserving neutrality in analysis, is constructed upon the heterogeneous data concerning urbanicity, greenspace, and physical health. The neutrality-preserving approach allows highlighting all three directions of finding: positive protective associations in more urban locations, no urbanicity differences, and positive protective associations in less urban locations. Directions, neutrality, smoothed dominance, and restriction by small groups give rise to the concrete urban signal. The numerical evidence includes 37 papers and 57 findings, including 22 findings favoring more urban areas, 29 neutral findings, and 6 findings favoring less urban areas. As a whole, the evidence base is mostly neutral; however, the directional subset shows very high levels of urban orientation, with 22 out of 28 non-neutral findings favoring more urban locations. Cardiovascular-related health outcomes demonstrate the highest values in outcome weighting, followed by mortality, birth outcomes, diabetes, cancer, respiratory-related conditions, and obesity-related disorders, while general physical well-being has a somewhat negative value. In terms of residential distance, the distance band at 500 m showed the greatest contribution to actionable value, whereas broader bands were either neutral or slightly less urban-oriented. Green landcover was shown to provide more actionable value than just public greenspace. Consequently, the interpretation is clear: considering neutrality in the total findings denominator, it is reasonable to prioritize urban greening at the residential scale.
- Research article
by
1Islamic Azad University of Ramsar
- Volume 112 Issue 4
- Pages: 114
- - 132
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221124-07
The importance of urban parks may be enhanced by mobility constraints which affect recreation opportunities, family visits and relief from the stress of the day. This paper attempts to determine whether the sharp fall in usage at two public parks in Jeddah during the COVID period indicated lack of park value or limited access to an undiminished valued resource for well-being. The data used includes park profile values, answers of 215 visitors, percentages, visit frequency and duration categories, motivation factors, place attachment items and crisis perception responses, relating to Al Masarah Garden and Al Jamaa Garden located centrally in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Numerical data includes park profile values, visitor responses (n=215), percentage statistics, visitor loads per hectare, shares of suppressed access, concentration of one-hour visits and a Restorative Access Demand index including restorative, proximity, social and equity sensitivity measures. Of the total responses received during the crisis period, 66% in the case of Al Masarah garden and 68% in the case of Al Jamaa garden did not report any park visits, whereas the share of visits not exceeding one hour rose to 66% and 71% respectively. However, these figures co-existed with strong restorative dependency: 67% actually missing parks, 79% feeling parks help relieve psychological stress, 81% considering that parks meet crisis period requirements, and 86% feeling that they are necessary for good mental health. Al Jamaa Garden had higher expected load per hectare, while Al Masarah Garden belonged to the category of older public gardens. Clearly, the Jeddah crisis period park usage issue revolved around accessibility of nearby, socially engaging green relief, rather than loss of public park value.
- Research article
by
1Department of Environmental Planning Pacific Research University Canada
2Department of Environmental Design Coastal Research University United States
- Volume 112 Issue 3
- Pages: 99
- - 113
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221123-06
The application of multifunctional green-infrastructure planning calls for more than the use of a ranked map. A priority value is useful when its class-gating threshold, spatial scale, weights and implementation context are properly interpreted together. In this research, an approach to class-gate the prioritization of green-infrastructure evidence into practical actions in Southeast Michigan was designed. Six criteria were considered at a common 30 m spatial scale where possible: stormwater management, social vulnerability, green space access, summer land surface temperature, PM2.5 and ozone air quality, and habitat connectivity. In addition, evidence related to planting priorities was considered for Detroit and property-based conservation evidence for Washtenaw County. At the regional level, there was a high priority band starting at 5.05 in the 0–7.77 range which can be used in metropolitan coordination. At the urban level, the high priority band started at 6.87 in the 0–7.91 range which would identify first-review planting priorities in the urban area. For conservation, Washtenaw County had a priority weighting scheme with the weights of stormwater management, habitat connectivity, air quality, and heat being 25%, and social vulnerability and access to green space being 10%. The top properties varied in the different categories: Lambuth Farms and Conservation Easement–Northfield Twp–01 were the best in the category of conservation easements; Meadows Preserve and Northfield Woods Preserve were the best in the preserved recreation lands; while Newman, Morehouse 1, and Morehouse 2 were the best in the category of inactive nominations.
- Research article
by
1The University of Sheffield
- Volume 112 Issue 3
- Pages: 78
- - 97
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221123-05
Planned capital districts are normally characterized using the growth rate of the administrative city, but the persistence of their land system can be determined based on the reaction of surrounding villages, industrial fringes, cultivated lands, scrublands and water channels. Gandhinagar district of Gujarat State is studied using the Agro-Urban Coupling Efficiency Audit framework to test if low urban growth comes with efficient agricultural retention. Land cover accounting uses nine classes of data in 1995, 2003, 2010, 2016 and 2025 with accuracy of classification of data for 2016, 2016-2025 transition probabilities and driver association coefficients. Built up urban, built up rural and other built up land categories are considered together in the settlement absorption category and compared to agriculture, bare land and semi natural water. Agricultural land area decreases from 1825.36 km2 in 1995 to 1730.49 km2 in 2016 and to 1676.70 km2 in 2025. The constructed land increases from 120.13 km2 to 218.99 km2 between 1995-2016 and grows to 255.68 km2 in 2025. The cost of agriculture retention increases drastically because 0.96 km2 of agricultural land change to every 1 square kilometre of constructed land gain between 1995-2016 and 1.47 km2 during 2016-2025. The transitions occur mainly in agriculture and scrublands with 53.99 km2 and 20.71 km2 expected to leave their 2016 class designation. Driver analysis reveals that proximity to urban centre is first and elevation, river/canal distance and slope still highly correlated. Gandhinagar low urban growth implies that the district is undergoing transformation at an earlier stage and agricultural retention needs intervention.
- Research article
by
1Landscape Architecture Department, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU)
- Volume 112 Issue 2
- Pages: 58
- - 77
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221122-04
The resilience of fresh fruits and vegetables in Great Britain goes beyond merely considering the area of urban green spaces. Various crop classes suitable for cultivation outdoors differ in terms of productivity, level of imports dependency, storage behaviour, and urban governance requirements, while exotic produce is always structurally reliant on imports. The current study attempts to calculate the shares of land subject to supply pressure from each of six crop classes of produce suitable for cultivation outdoors. The calculation combines data on crop yield, domestic production, imports, current supply, inferred productive area of urban green spaces, and the town’s capacity for the production of crops in question to identify the share of land needed to compensate for the current imports and current supply within each of six compatible crop classes. In this way, land shares have been calculated at 25.9%, 4.7%, 10.4%, 11.5%, 18.2%, and 29.4% for orchard fruits, soft fruits, roots and onions, brassicas, legumes, and other vegetables respectively. National production in case of fully utilised productive potential would amount to 21.568 million tonnes per year – this equals 36.4% of domestic production plus imports and 394.0% of the current supply of the six compatible classes. While the latter figure seems unmanageable, its practical implications are more moderate. Thus, 16.2% of productive green space area in all towns could be sufficient for importing the amount of produce specified, while 32.4% would be needed to produce all this produce domestically. By altering the crop mix in 26 towns/cities, a production volume of 164.2 to 271.1 kg per person per year may be achieved, which surpasses the annual mass equivalent of daily guidelines in all cases.
- Research article
by
1HuanTian Wisdom Technology Co., Ltd., Meishan, Sichuan, 620564, China
- Volume 112 Issue 2
- Pages: 37
- - 57
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221122-03
The potential for urban green space as climate-adaptive assets is well established. However, what designers and other practitioners need from evidence about outdoor urban green spaces are findings that (a) identify manipulable variables, (b) are relevant at a relevant scale, (c) state the form of any transferable guidance, and (d) make clear how a finding can guide the practice of urban streets, squares, parks, and residential open spaces. The purpose of this study is to construct a Design-Translation Completeness Audit (DTCA) capable of identifying where there are losses in usability within a 76-case record of studies on outdoor urban green spaces and climate adaptation. The audit consists of organizing the evidence into the Design Translation Record, DTR-76, consisting of six layers of information, which are connected and nested: adaptation target, scale, research method, practitioner-facing output, design relevance, and transferability. The key test is whether the usability of the knowledge base is impaired primarily by the problem of coverage (topic), proximity, methods used, output conversion (how relevant knowledge is communicated), relevance, or transferability. Findings are that there is greater usability loss in the output-conversion layer than in the scale and relevance layers. Of the 76 studies, 49 address thermal comfort; 22 address urban heat-island mitigation or urban cooling; and 5 address stormwater management. Site-, street- and multiscale research account for 52 cases; controlled field studies account for 2. For 72 practitioner-focused outputs, 41 give insight, 17 give recommendation, 4 give guideline, 2 give design proposal, and 8 other types of structured outputs. Among 72 outputs, 64 are design-relevant, but only 23 are direct outputs. The Design Translation Completeness Index is 0.761; the operational conversion value is 0.345. The main finding is the specific finding of a loss in usability of evidence. Four quantitative targets arise from the audit: 13 more design insights need to be converted to guidance; 13 more stormwater studies are needed for one-fifth representation; 7 more controlled field studies are needed for one-tenth representation; and 5 medium transfer outputs should be upgraded to high transfer guidance.
- Research article
by No authors found.
- Volume 112 Issue 1
- Pages: 20
- - 36
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221121-02
Adaptation to urban heat requires scientific knowledge about the magnitude of the impact of existing vegetation-induced cooling on a certain thermal threshold and the resilience of such benefits in face of uncertainty. This article introduces a tree canopy cooling attainment calculation across 601 European FUAs in the EU-27 region. The methodological computation is based on July-August 2018 Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS land surface temperature, Copernicus tree cover density, PML V2 canopy transpiration-interception evaporation rates, Global Human Settlements population density in 2015, and model evaluation against 463 NOAA weather stations as in Marando et al. [16]. The computation translates FUA cooling into target attainment, reserves, tree cover shortage equivalent and population concordance. The average cooling attained in Europe is 1.07 ∘C, while the range of cooling per FUA is approximately −0.4 to 2.9 ∘C. Out of the total number of FUAs, 281 are still below 1 ∘C, 208 reach 1 ∘C cooling, and 112 reach 1.5 ∘C and above, the reliable one-degree mark following the application of a 0.5 ∘C allowance. The cooling target attainment thresholds using canopy as reference measure are: 16%, 32% and 48% tree canopy cover respectively for 1, 2 and 3 ∘C cooling. Results from the model comparison showed that country-conditioned structural forms offer a better forecasting capability compared to universal models and the complete mixed effects form has the smallest RMSE and a relative improvement of 32.1% from the null model. On the population dimension, in 63% of the cases, more than half of the population live in positive-cooling FUAs while in 37% the opposite holds. These results suggest that European greening policy should differentiate between positive cooling, one-degree attainment, reliable reserves and population alignment.
- Research article
by
1Faculty of Architecture and Urban Studies Capital Design University Canada
2Department of Environmental Planning Pacific Research University Canada
3Department of Environmental Design Coastal Research University United States
- Volume 112 Issue 1
- Pages: 1
- - 19
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20221121-01
Urban green infrastructure provides local municipalities a way to speak about parks, rivers, wetlands, coastal areas, street trees, and urban forest systems as public resources rather than incidental spaces. Green infrastructure is, however, not an equal concept throughout cities. While some cities are endowed with significant ecological assets, yet tend to speak using adjacent terminologies like “ecological infrastructure,” “climate adaptation” or “ecosystem services”; others possess less of green cover but are equipped with stronger policy languages that define green infrastructure in terms of planning and infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to assess the legibility of administrative language in relation to the concept of green infrastructure in five cities—Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Birmingham and London—using the Civic-Ecological Translation Index (CETI). The CETI assessment uses the five parameters of population pressure, ecological endowment, direct green-infrastructure language, balance of stakeholder sectors, and local narrative alignment. Five cities possess the data points of population size, administrative area, green-cover endowment, reference to policy documents and distribution of stakeholder sectors. London leads the pack with CETI of 0.923 due to significant direct language, high pressure from density, wide distribution of stakeholder sectors and National Park City narrative. Johannesburg and Birmingham are at an intermediate stage with CETI scores of 0.663 and 0.646 respectively, though Johannesburg tends to favor use of green resource and provision of services while Birmingham uses natural capital and ecosystem-services language. Cape Town scores 0.524 by use of ecological infrastructure and blue-green service language. Although Durban has 60 percent green cover, its low CETI score of 0.438 indicates that it uses language of adaptation and ecosystem services as a means of environmental management without direct green-infrastructure language in key policy documents.
Call for Papers
Landscape Architecture invites submissions for Volume 2026, Issue 3, scheduled for publication in September 2026. The journal welcomes high-quality scholarly contributions that advance research, theory, criticism, and applied knowledge in landscape architecture and related fields.