Transcript
Journal of Environmental Protection and Ecology 17, No 2, 737–746 (2016) Environmental protection and sustainable development – landscape planning
LANDSCAPE ASSESSMENTS IN BARTIN (TR) VIA GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE APPROACH M. ARTARa*, S. GORMUSa, S. CENGIZb Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Forestry, Bartin University, 74 200 Bartin, Turkey E-mail:
[email protected] b Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Inonu University, Malatya, Turkey a
Abstract. Recent researches on a sustainable relationship especially in urban areas have been focusing on ecosystem services. Green infrastructure approach together with green networks, green roofs and storm water management systems offers benefits for ecological, socio-cultural and economical functions. Natural areas including rivers, coasts or forest that located in and around cities are valuable assets for the unity and sustainability of urban landscapes. According to European Commission, waterfront cities which rivers pass through are ecologically valuable and those rivers are important components of green infrastructure that providing ecosystem services for urban areas. The aim of this study was to evaluate Bartin River and vicinity with regard to green infrastructure potential and the role and benefits of Bartin River in urban ecosystem as a natural ecological corridor. Study was carried out within 18 neighbourhoods in Bartin Municipality and covering 92 city parks on and around Bartin River. Keywords: green infrastructure, Bartin, parks, European Landscape Convention, riverscape.
AIMS AND BACKGROUND Due to rapid increase in population and construction for urbanisation, cities of 21st century change rapid and dynamically. When the cities change, different characters of the cities also eventually change. On the other hand, rivers, green spaces and natural areas in the cities limit the change of urban texture and urban development and often function as important natural characters of the cities. Recently, the climate change has become an important topic and brought more emphasis on the urban water management and green infrastructure connections. Due to the large hard surfaces, heavily built urban texture and the lack of water management systems the number of natural disasters like flooding increased enormously. Recently, Green infrastructure (GI) approach has become a critical issue for experts for good urban development, landscape management and urban health.
*
For correspondence.
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The enhancement of green areas has the potential to mitigate the negative impacts of urbanisation on natural environment in a sustainable way, making cities more attractive to live in and buffering urban sprawl. Nowadays, there is an increasing societal support for more green space in and around cities1. Urban green spaces provide essential ecosystem services and improve environmental quality of life. But open space networks are often fragmented by urban development, and therefore, it is difficult to reclaim natural lands after they have been built up2. Benedict and McMahon3 discussed that green infrastructure contributes greatly to the health and quality of life for America communities and people as a strategically planned and managed network of wilderness, parks, greenways, conservation easements and working lands with conservation value that supports native species, maintains natural ecological processes, sustains air and water resources. Rouse and Bunster-Ossa4 suggested that GI is more than just implementing measures at various scales, from green roofs and rain gardens to regional greenways and open space. Literally, GI refers to an interconnected green space network including natural areas and features, public and private conservation lands, working lands with conservation values, and other protected open spaces that is planned and managed for its natural resource values and for the associated benefits it confers to human populations. Term of green infrastructure describes a process that promotes a systematic and strategic approach to land conservation at the national, state, regional, and local scales, encouraging sustainable land-use planning and practices3. Benedict and McMahon3 claimed that GI helps to sustain forests, farms, and other working lands and allows natural systems to function as intended, saving communities millions of dollars in flood mitigation, water purification. GI also provides mental and physical health benefits as well as outdoor recreation, for the inhabitants of the cities. It helps to protect valuable natural amenities by attracting also tourists and visitors to the city. A key question for planners and designers is how can we measure these benefits to demonstrate the value of green infrastructure brings to society? Besides environmental and economic indicators, there are social (community) indicators which include parks and open space access (typically measured in terms of walking distance to the nearest resource), parks and open space equity (typically measured in terms of distribution relative to demographics), public health outcomes, etc.4 Landscape Institute-UK stated that the role of GI in addressing the challenges of the 21st century cannot be underestimated. GI is defined here as the network of natural and semi-natural features, green spaces, rivers and lakes that intersperse and connect villages, towns and cities. It is a natural, service-providing infrastructure that is often more cost-effective, more resilient and more capable of meeting social, environmental and economic objectives than ‘grey’ infrastructure5. 738
There is a clear need that GI should be designed and managed as a multifunctional resource capable of delivering those ecological services and quality of life benefits required by the communities that it serves and needed to underpin sustainability. Design and management of GI should also respect and enhance the character and distinctiveness of an area with regard to habitats and landscape types. The European Landscape Convention (ELC) brings a holistic approach to the landscape by the definition as ‘…an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’. The ELC recognises the multifunctional value of our landscapes, which is fully consistent with the green infrastructure approach. Recognition of landscape character is a core part of Natural England Landscape Policy underpinning that retrofitting and creation of green infrastructure elements can contribute to the landscape strategies. Other elements of green infrastructure planning, such as education and public participation, are also consistent with the aims of the ELC (Ref. 6). GI can be broadly defined as a strategically planned network of high quality natural and semi-natural areas. More specifically, being a spatial structure GI can foster a better quality of life and human well-being, enhance environmental quality, improve biodiversity by reconnecting isolated nature areas and increasing the mobility of wildlife across the wider landscape, prevent environmental disasters by alleviating floods, storing carbon or preventing soil erosion, encourage a smarter, more integrated approach to development in as efficient and coherent a way as possible7. The types of physical features that contribute to GI are diverse, specific to each location or place and very scale-dependent. On the local scale, biodiversityrich parks, gardens, green roofs, ponds, streams, woods, hedgerows, meadows, restored brownfield sites and coastal sand-dunes can all contribute to GI if they deliver multiple ecosystem services. They have an important function: to deliver multiple benefits, or connect ecosystems, so that they can deliver their services8. A green infrastructure typology covers: ● Parks and gardens – urban parks, country and regional parks, formal gardens; ● Amenity greenspace – informal recreation spaces, housing green spaces, domestic gardens, village greens, urban commons, other incidental space, green roofs; ● Natural and semi-natural urban greenspaces – woodland and scrub, grassland, heath or moor, wetlands, open and running water, wastelands and disturbed ground), bare rock habitats (e.g. cliffs and quarries); ● Green corridors – rivers and canals including their banks, road and rail corridors, cycling routes, pedestrian paths, and rights of way; ● Other – allotments, community gardens, city farms, cemeteries and churchyards6. Demiroglu et al.9 articulated that green infrastructures in Kilis city, Turkey, are not planned as an integrated system and their contributions to sustainable 739
development of the city are quite weak. They found that as of 2013, with a total population of 89 442 the city has a ratio of 3.65 m2 of active green areas per capita. The 2nd International Conference ‘The New Generation of Green Infrastructure’ concludes that the green sustainable development is the only way for the prudent use of natural resources and the environment for future generations. Each state should encourage the Green Business and GI in order: (1) to promote the development; (2) to reduce social inequality; (3) to limit the effects of climate change; (4) to reduce environmental degradation; (5) to better manage the problems of the growing scarcity of raw materials; (6) to secure funding that will yield long-term gains, and (7) to face the pressures of population growth10. The focus of this research is to evaluate benefits and values of ecological corridors of Bartin River and vicinity, using GI approach and its contributions to urban ecosystem based on parks and garden within Bartin Municipality. Resilience to flooding and economic outcomes with regard to proposed management system of Bartin River is also discussed. Bartin River has been a passive recreation area as well as an ecologically important site with biological richness of flora and fauna. As the requested connection with active recreational areas has not been supplied with corridors, the parks and open public spaces of the city could not serve as an input of green infrastructure element11. Bartin River has a character of a network connecting rural and urban landscape which surrounds the city and accordingly more emphasis will be given to ‘parks and gardens’ and ‘green corridors’ in this paper. EXPERIMENTAL This research was held within the borders of 18 neighbourhoods covering the given list of parks by the Bartin Municipality (Fig. 1). Ninety-two parks are examined for the study located in different neighbourhoods. Some sites, those double written or parks and children playgrounds on military ground were eliminated from the study. As a data set 1:25 000 scale Environmental Plan, beside 1:5000 and 1:1000 scales Construction Plans were used. The methodology of our study covered 4 stages of analytical approach: (1) fieldworks and visualisation; (2) green/grey surface relation and density; (3) identification of park typology, and (4) proposals for green infrastructure.
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Bartin City
Fig. 1. Location of the study area
Fieldworks and visualisation. All 92 parks listed by the Municipality had been visited and evaluated on site. The location and the borders of the parks were recorded by Global Positioning System (GPS). Urban furniture and green-grey interaction had been recorded via taking photos. Borders of the parks and the area were controlled via overlay analysis with Arcview Geographical Information System (GIS) 10.1 version and the Basemap of the software and the actual areas of the parks were obtained. Green space density. Park borders were overlaid with the neighbourhood so the number of parks located in concerning neighbourhoods was obtained. Areas were compared with the population living along the neighbourhood and green space per capita was calculated. Identification of park typology. Green space and impermeable land of each park was calculated. Due to this the ratios of green to grey were classified by less than 40, 40–70, more than 70% were classified as low-medium and high green spaces, respectively. Proposals for green infrastructure. In order to offer proposals for green corridors, physical layout and data sets of 1:25 000 scaled Environmental Plan, 1:5000, 1:1000 scaled Construction Plans and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and current Landuse-Landcover (LULC) map were used. Possible corridors were proposed 741
between actual parks and planned green spaces with reclassified DEM and the data obtained had been overlaid with LULC. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Actual situation of the parks in Bartin. Relating to green infrastructure and user density of public parks, population statistics in Bartin Municipality are given in Table 1 and Fig. 2. According to the Address Based Population Registration System (ADNKS) in 2014, the population of 18 neighbourhoods in Bartin is 63 253 people (Ref.12). The table reveals that the number of population below and over +18 years of ages, number of parks and green spaces per capita along the neighbourhoods (Table1). Table 1. Neighbourhoods of Bartin, population and distribution of parks12,13
No Neighbourhood 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Total
Agdaci Aladag Cumhuriyet Cayduzu Demirciler Esentepe Golbucagi Hurriyet Karacay Karakoy Kemerkopru Kirtepe Koyortasi Okulak Orduyeri Orta Siremircavus Tuna
Population No of parks total over below +18 +18 2622 2356 266 3 4714 3363 1351 7 2920 2131 789 7 3314 2413 901 4 3336 2452 884 3 2283 1613 670 7 7660 5762 1898 7 2688 1785 903 0 323 256 67 2 2412 1756 656 2 9692 7231 2461 15 3780 2982 798 8 1664 1399 265 3 1584 1263 321 0 6560 4909 1651 12 1881 1491 390 2 904 721 183 3 4916 3589 1327 7 63.253 47472 15781 92
Area of total Green space green space per capita (m2) (m2) 2459.73 0.94 3611.78 0.77 3990.13 1.37 1871.53 0.56 713.33 0.21 6261.89 2.74 10162.93 1.33 0.00 0.00 16948.40 52.47 1210.76 0.50 16955.25 1.75 22138.62 5.86 26262.70 15.78 0.00 0.00 9561.12 1.46 2601.33 1.38 821.07 0.91 9493.07 1.93 135063.65 2.14
Green infrastructure assessment of Bartin City. According to the green/grey assessments in parks of Bartin city, it can be said that most of the parks are lack of plant material, some of them have little amount of plant cover. There are 92 parks listed by the municipality of which 37 have low green space, 29 medium and 26 high amount of green space with plant materials. Those are evaluated within the 742
fieldworks and measured on field due to the density of vegetation and hard landscapes. Parks with low level vegetation cover mostly related to children playground basketball or volleyball areas. Some of them have outdoor fitness equipments. This fact is open to discussion about what are the benefits for green infrastructure. For those parks just have hard surfaces without no plant material the other discussion is that the use of the areas in all different seasons. As most of the playgrounds with no green space locate close or in private residential sites most of them cannot be used under hot climate conditions in the daytime of summer season. When evaluated in means of urban equipment quality, cleanness, health and security it can be said that most of the parks are lack of clean areas with broken banks and rubbish boxes. Figure 2 shows the distribution of parks in Kemerkopru neighbourhood which has low-medium and high density of vegetation with planned green spaces.
Fig. 2. Distribution of parks in Kemerkopru neighbourhood of Bartin Municipality
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Most of the parks are not accessible for disabled people and many of them have dangerous electricity transformer stations so close to children playgrounds. Some are located under electricity power lines. Most of the parks fall into conditions that could not be evaluated as part of a GI system as they are totally located under dangerous and unhealthy circumstances. Those areas might be evaluated as a part of the system just only after revitalisation. As seen in the construction plans, Bartin River forms an important ecological corridor in the city. Most of the parts of this corridor cannot be reached by the people living around. This might be important for ecosystem services of the river itself for flora and fauna but as seen from Table 1, green space per capita is only 2.14 m2 in Bartin even though the Construction Law describes it to be 10 m2 per capita. Because of this fact the river banks and the corridor should be designed via connections with other recreational areas of the city. Aladag neighbourhood has the lowest green area per capita while Karacay neighbourhood with new landscape design areas has the highest. Even though it has the highest amount per capita, that does not cover the amount of 10 m2 of standard of the Construction Law. Ecological corridor proposal. As described in the introduction excluding the Bartin river itself, the green system of Bartin do not form an ecological corridor which will feed the green infrastructure. So the methodology used in this paper tried to form ecological network between planned green spaces and the actual parks. Land use and land cover data which had been classified by twenty classes had been used as a base. The corridor had been formed via appropriate features such as actual roads, agricultural areas, residential landscapes, the river corridor, etc. Destinations are described due to appropriate slopes and actual parks had been connected to planned green spaces. There are many possibilities for green infrastructure applications in Bartin city. Beginning from state buildings green roofs might bring an enormous solution for the rainwater investment. Most of the residential areas are covered by high grey walls and green wall applications might also be solutions for many parts of the city. Bartin city along the Western Black Sea is famous for its flood during all seasons. Little amount of rain in a short period might also cause flood problems. The rainwater line which is connected to sewage should be evaluated in a different manner. So as to use the rain water effectively rain gardens might be solution especially close to low attitudes. As the river rises which meant flood for the city design techniques via thinking sustainable use of water should be considered. The ponds after rain might be temporary wetlands and designed with natural vegetation which will mitigate the unexpected results of the flood.
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CONCLUSIONS Bartin city is well known with its floods. A vast flood in the Western Black Sea region of Turkey in May 1998 caused great loss and caused significant damage. Communication network, transportation, and construction cost of the disaster was estimated around US $500 million. Rainwater management is an important issue for the city. The flood exists in a very short and limited time as recent years brought more alluvial material from highlands and the construction industry developed more than expected. Green infrastructure approach is more important on such cases and if GI is accepted as an approach, Bartin River might be not a problematic issue than an important feature for recreation and tourism. As the river in the past covered most of the characteristics of GI approach which meant multifunctionality, connectivity, habitability, resiliency, identity, return on investment, it has a great potential. The river had been used for transport, connected different aspects of the city, gave birth to ecosystem and gave its name to the city. It is well known that GI offers cheaper solutions than traditional civil engineering activities. Even with just the pollination effect, green roofs and greenways have significant contribution to urban health. Green systems let energy save, water treatment and better infrastructure planning capability. The findings and comparisons with many case studies within Europe show actual green spaces which are called parks by the local authorities do not cover permeable pavements and roads, rain gardens, green roofs and roof gardens, rain harvesting systems, road plantations, maintenance of landscape designs and wetland formations. There is also misuse of plant material especially at some of the parks designed. GI approach is an important solution for cities living with floods such as Bartin. Landscape planning and design due to the characteristics of the cities themselves is an important approach. Regulations for secure life, healthy cityscapes and happy nations might be supplied with interdisciplinary studies of green infrastructure approach. Grey infrastructure is assumed to be planned effectively if only thought with interaction with the green infrastructure. Bartin River shows an important ecological network feature and an important landscape character for the region. The river with the ecosystem services might only be carried to further generations with a common understanding of common understanding with stakeholders. GI approach which offers for all actors of city management to come together and plan the city might also bring effective results of increasing total income for residents. Acknowledgements. Authors wish to acknowledge Bartin University Scientific Research Projects Commission for support given to the Project coded 2013.2.102 and master students who have been involved during the field and office works.
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