title: Mitigating and adapting to climate change: multi-functional and multi-scale assessment of green urban infrastructure.
abstract: In order to develop climate resilient urban areas and reduce emissions, several opportunities exist starting from conscious planning and design of green (and blue) spaces in these landscapes. Green urban infrastructure has been regarded as beneficial, e.g. by balancing water flows, providing thermal comfort. This article explores the existing evidence on the contribution of green spaces to climate change mitigation and adaptation services. We suggest a framework of ecosystem services for systematizing the evidence on the provision of bio-physical benefits (e.g. CO2 sequestration) as well as social and psychological benefits (e.g. improved health) that enable coping with (adaptation) or reducing the adverse effects (mitigation) of climate change. The multi-functional and multi-scale nature of green urban infrastructure complicates the categorization of services and benefits, since in reality the interactions between various benefits are manifold and appear on different scales. We will show the relevance of the benefits from green urban infrastructures on three spatial scales (i.e. city, neighborhood and site specific scales). We will further report on co-benefits and trade-offs between the various services indicating that a benefit could in turn be detrimental in relation to other functions. The manuscript identifies avenues for further research on the role of green urban infrastructure, in different types of cities, climates and social contexts. Our systematic understanding of the bio-physical and social processes defining various services allows targeting stressors that may hamper the provision of green urban infrastructure services in individual behavior as well as in wider planning and environmental management in urban areas.
authors.affiliation: KU Leuven, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Demuzere
authors.affiliation: Institute for Agriculture and Environment, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu, Estonia; University of Tartu, Institute of Social Sciences, Tartu, Estonia. Electronic address: kati.orru@ut.ee.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Orru
authors.affiliation: Newcastle University, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Newcastle, UK.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Heidrich
authors.affiliation: Energy and Environment Division, Tecnalia, Derio, Spain; Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Olazabal
authors.affiliation: University of Trento, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, Trento, Italy.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Geneletti
authors.affiliation: University of Tartu, Department of Public Health, Tartu, Estonia; Umea University, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå, Sweden.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Orru
authors.affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India.
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Bhave
authors.affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mittal
authors.affiliation: Energy and Environment Division, Tecnalia, Derio, Spain.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Feliu
authors.affiliation: Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki, Finland; University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Faehnle
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D002958:City Planning; D057231:Climate Change; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D017753:Ecosystem; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans; D014504:Urban Health
keywords: Biophysical benefit; Climate change; Ecosystem services; Green urban infrastructure; Social benefit; Spatial scale