New Issue Published: Landscape Architecture, Volume 2026, Issue 1
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- Research article
Regime Capability and Repair Priority in European Policy Portfolios for Urban Nature-Based Solutions
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1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
- Volume 113 Issue 2
- Pages: 72
- - 90
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231132-05
Today, nature-based solutions in urban environments need to be regarded not only as projects but also as infrastructure for adaptation, restoration, moderation, cooling, public health, and overall quality of life. However, their increasing use relies on policy portfolios that should provide more than mere regulations, funding, or guidance documents. Rather, they have to build at least some level of capability within a broad set of institutional, economic, technical, cultural, and delivery conditions within which urban infrastructure is planned, built, financed, maintained, and valued. In this article, we introduce Regime-Capability Readiness Assessments for seven European case studies: European Union, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Our approach converts policy-instrument codes into four capability states – from vacant to anchored and then combines these indicators based on three metrics: sufficiency of instrument families, capped regime saturation, and bottlenecks protection. Consequently, the developed Implementation-Readiness and Repair Index provides information on how close each portfolio is to being capable of sustaining routine nature-based implementation. The European Union demonstrates the highest score, 96.6, due to sufficiency of all instrument families and absence of any vacuum or fragility in its regime dimensions. While Germany possesses strong capacity of policy making, it suffers in its implementation readiness due to the lack of functioning industry-network and physical technology elements. The United Kingdom and Sweden find themselves in an intermediate position with their distinctive needs for repair: Sweden lacks economic and usage practice capabilities, while the United Kingdom requires financial and funding repairs. Despite retaining strong knowledge base, the Netherlands still require further development. Finally, both Spain and Hungary require further strengthening of foundational elements. It turns out that capacity assessment should always consider the issue of capability development.
- Research article
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1Senior Advisor in Environmental Planning and Conservation Global Landscape Policy Institute United Kingdom
- Volume 113 Issue 2
- Pages: 56
- - 71
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231132-04
In recent years, informal urban green spaces have come to be seen as assets for ecology and society alike amid dense, stratified and climatically vulnerable cityscapes. Ecological and social planning rationales behind informal urban green space may involve habitat conservation, cooling, stormwater management, recreation, aesthetics, and production; however, these rationales are differently well founded depending on the specific nature of the space, which includes brownfields, vacant land or lots, wastelands, urban wildness, spontaneous vegetation, and even the label of informal green space itself. This paper investigates whether the ecological services associated with each category rest on empirical support for the interactions among them. An existing inventory of 112 academic publications addressing informal green-space ecosystem services was parsed out in terms of service load, ecological-retention share, direct-contact share, multi-service treatment, intervention exposure, interaction-audit coverage, and potential-use liability. It turns out that vacant land and lots carry the greatest potential-use liability in the amount of 50.6 due to their future-oriented focus coupled with just 4.2% interaction-audit coverage. Multi-service treatment among brownfields is relatively defensible at 75.8%, as much as the interaction-audit coverage is at 24.0%, yet the vast majority of the brownfield papers do not consider service interaction. Informal green spaces are least exposed to liability due to its descriptive nature rather than being a physically changing target. Wastelands exhibit the largest share of ecological retention in 77.9%, and neither urban wildness nor spontaneous vegetation papers contain any data on interaction audit coverage.
- Research article
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1Department of Garden History and Landscape Heritage Royal Urban Studies Institute United Kingdom
- Volume 113 Issue 1
- Pages: 38
- - 55
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231131-03
Coastal adaptation requires a direct contrast between the level of local climate pressure and the utility provided by the functions associated with the blue-green action. In this case, we focus on Chennai and Kochi, Indian coastal cities facing climate pressure from exposure to sea-level rise, heavy rain, warming, drainage challenges, and land use. These two cities experience all five pressures without generating similar climate adaptation needs. Hydro-Institutional Adaptation Partitioning (HIAP) is used to translate the values of 2080 climate projections and planning actions into four pairs of dimensions that include: thermal pressure, sea-level pressure, rainfall-regime pressure, and extreme-event pressure. The planning cover was operationalized based on national policy and planning program support, climate planning, wetland/biodiversity projects, and participation in canal governance. It is observed that the two cities had a consistent number of action classes of four, yet different adaptation needs. Chennai has the larger sea-level coefficient than that of Kochi and maintains small uncovered pressure in both thermal and sea-level dimensions. On the other hand, Kochi has the highest overall climate pressure due to high levels of warming and decline in mean rainfall. The latter also maintains the larger uncovered pressure related to thermal moderation and rainfall retention capacity. Sensitivity tests revealed that the uncovered climate pressure in Kochi increased with respect to heat-dryness weighting, whereas Chennai stayed responsive to sea-level drainages and heat sensitive open spaces.
- Research article
by
1College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
2Turenscape Urban Planning and Design Co., Ltd., Beijing 100080, China
- Volume 113 Issue 1
- Pages: 20
- - 37
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231131-02
High-resolution overhead imagery captures building arrangement, street structure, vegetation cover, industrial land use, water surfaces, and outdoor activity space in a resolution appropriate for neighborhood analysis. However, semantic classification of such imagery is reduced to an ordinal score by counting favorable criteria, despite the difference in recognition reliability between visual cues and the possibility of moving from one class to another by changing one indicator alone. An Evidence-Calibrated Urban Scene Quality Index (ECUSQI) was devised to convert five semantically identifiable visual indicators into a reliability-based five-point scale. We analyzed a test set of 3038 labeled samples of urban imagery patches extracted from central Changsha (China) among 3874 RGB patches of 250 × 250 pixels with 0.5 m ground sampling distance (GSD). Recognition reliability of 615 test scenes with respect to open building layout, grid-like street structure, vegetation coverage, lack of industrial areas, and presence of activity space was estimated in the training procedure. Jeffreys smoothing of recognition reliability normalizes each indicator increase, the posterior uncertainty component identifies scores based on less reliable semantic information, and the threshold margin term points out classes determined by a less confident inference. The test dataset includes 527 scenes with five correct decisions, 77 with four, 9 with three, and 2 with two, implying an average of 4.836 correct and 0.164 incorrect indicator interpretations per scene. The accuracies of indicators range from 93.17% for buildings to 98.86% for industrial areas. Co-attention reduces the expectation of indicator mistakes by 58.0% and decreases the multi-mistake probability by 8.48% to 1.79%. In the spatial interpretation, ECUSQI is lower in more densely populated districts of older construction and higher in green residential areas with open structure and activity space. Our index serves a concrete measuring purpose, since reliable overhead semantic information can inform fine-grained environmental evaluation, along with its threshold sensitivity.
- Research article
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1Department of Landscape Planning, Prairie State University, United States
2Department of Environmental Design, Coastal Research University, United States
- Volume 113 Issue 1
- Pages: 1
- - 19
- https://doi.org/10.70517/la20231131-01
Now that the greening of climate infrastructure is firmly established as part of urban adaptation, however, civic effectiveness is more complicated than hydrology, cooling capacity, plant cover or space design alone. Socially fragile adaptation occurs where greening brings local benefits to people who face displacement pressure, selective redevelopment, access restrictions and weakened local identity. In this study, Resident Retention Gate Analysis (RRGA) is introduced as an ordinal civic calculation of the likelihood that socio-environmental benefits are usable by marginalized residents. Applying the calculation involves mapping a civic record of each of four neighborhoods in Boston, Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Barcelona: their histories, their climate/environmental problems, their greening interventions, their redevelopment pressures, their distribution of civic interviews and the order magnitude of their benefits in terms of recognition, displacement experience, displacement threat, development, dissatisfaction, green gentrification fears, unequal access and social cohesion disruption. RRGA turns those order-magnitudes into civic gates based on three civic criteria: tenure stability, public development orientation and continuity of access/belonging. It calculates the retained benefit score by multiplying recognized benefit with the average of the two constraints and the dominant one. The retention deficits are worst in East Boston due to high tenure pressure and greening associated with the marketization of waterfront amenities, where only a small civic gate makes room for benefits that are already recognized to be moderate. The retained benefit score is highest in Hunting Park, whose high greening need has been coupled with low marketization pressure, despite green gentrification fears being very real there. The Amsterdam Noord case features a bottleneck situation caused by investment-led greening and creative redevelopment, as well as waterfront amenities. The most exclusionary and protection-focused tension between benefits and constraints emerges in Poblenou, where high need for greening is compounded by strong displacement and redevelopment pressures. Conclusion: Climate-adaptive greening should be evaluated in terms of resident retention – the crucial question here being whether the affected community will remain nearby, able to govern, access and take ownership of their environmental improvement.
- Research article
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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.