Development of a GIS methodology to evaluate informal urban green areas for inclusion in a community governance program

Abstract

Informal green spaces are “small green areas” which are some square meter plots along streets or in junctions, in front of public or private buildings. Informal urban green space become or remain in neglected condition due to the lack of capacity of the municipality to maintain them. Further, there is a lack of responsibility, competency and motivation of the residents to voluntarily take care of them (Rupprecht et al., 2015, Hardman et al., 2018), as is the case of the 12th district of Budapest in Hungary which is the pilot area of this research.
Municipalities can decide to cooperate with the residents to tackle this problem, but there is no information about the informal green spaces (IGS). Following an extensive search through the literature, no GIS method appears to address the analysis of informal green areas in relation to their suitability for the inclusion into a community governance program as the Stewardship Program of the 12th district. In the frame of the program, the Municipality and residents cooperate on the maintenance of IGS.
The current research intends to fill this knowledge gap by developing a methodology using GIS to identify and categorize informal urban green spaces (IGS) according to their suitability for inclusion in community management services.
As the first step, interviews and questionnaires were conducted with the leaders and the stewards (residents) of the Stewardship Program to identify IGS attributes based on which IGS can be evaluated: Ownership (areas owned by the municipality); No-man lands/green islands; Not protected area; Safeness, air and noise pollution; Original vegetation cover; Manageable size; Closeness to home; Closeness to apartment buildings; Slope steepness; Water sources available for irrigation; Not to be protected area but close to them; Along busy pedestrian area; Sunniness.
In order to measure the identified attributes, spatial indicators were established by multi-criteria analyses method applying spatial analyses tool such as distance and network analysis tool.
The final output of the analysis was a suitability map about the 12th district of Budapest which shows those areas which have high potential and those areas which have low potential to include stewardship areas. Similar maps can be created for any other districts or cities following the methodology developed in the frame of this research.

Popular Abstract

Urban green spaces provide various environmental, social and economic benefits and offer an improved quality of life as they not only provide leisure or sports facilities but make the air cleaner, reduce urban noise and even improve the urban climate (Gupta et al., 2012). Yet if the authorities being responsible for the green areas do not have the capacity to maintain them well, green areas can easily generate conflicts between inhabitants and the responsible authorities (Hardman et al., 2018). Traditional top-down approaches are often not enough or efficient to tackle such conflicts thus a new approach is needed in which green spaces could be managed smartly through cooperation between inhabitants and various authorities. The Municipality of Budapest’s 12th district, also known as Hegyvidék, in Hungary has realized the necessity of such a new approach and has taken steps towards it which provided the basic idea for this research project.
The Municipality of Hegyvidék decided to participate in an Interreg Central Europe project called UGB (Urban Green Belts). In the frame of the project, the Municipality is implementing a pilot action called Stewardship Program. The program intends to create a strong community of residents who voluntarily cooperate with the municipality in taking care of “small green areas” which are some square meter plots along streets or in junctions, in front of public or private buildings being neglected due to the lack of capacity of the responsible authority to maintain them (Homepage of Stewardship Program of the Municipality of 12th district of Budapest). So far only a few small green areas were identified to be included in the Stewardship program which is in an initial phase, while it is expected that there are hundreds of small green areas which could be involved.
However, not all small green spaces are equally valued and suitable for community management. For instance, appropriate areas must be owned by the Municipality and cannot be protected areas. In addition, they should not locate near busy roads which is not safe enough for gardening and due to the local air and noise pollution, the work can become rather unpleasant and unhealthy. The aim of this research is to develop a methodology using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to evaluate these “small green urban spaces” for inclusion into a community governance program similar to the Stewardship program Hegyvidék operates. The method can help Municipalities and residents to find the most suitable green spaces for community governance. The method has been tested on the 12th district of Budapest producing a suitability map about the areas having high and low potential to include future stewardship areas.

• author: Bunyevácz, Katalin
• supervisor: Helena Borgqvist
• organization: Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
• course: GISM01 20191
• year: 2019
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• keywords: geography, GIS, informal urban green spaces, community governance, multi- criteria analysis
• publication/series: Master Thesis in Geographical Information Science
• report number: 107
• language: English
• id: 8991054
• date added to LUP: 2019-07-24 14:58:50
• date last changed: 2019-07-24 14:58:51