Collaborative planning of urban green infrastructure : Need, quality, evaluation, and design

Abstract

Urban green infrastructure refers to the network of nature areas and elements in an urban region, from the relatively natural ecosystems to such man-made structures as constructed parks. This infrastructure is shaped in policy-making and planning on land use and management and development of nature areas. In Finland, involving residents in this planning is routine practice and also required by legislation. In collaborative planning, diverse residents and other stakeholders are invited to participate in planning and decision-making processes, with the aim of influencing the information content of planning. However, the unclear role of residents input makes collaboration inefficient for planners and residents. In the green infrastructure context, a particular challenge for the use of residents input is the strong role of ecological expertise. This thesis develops methods for evaluating and designing collaborative processes in planning and decision-making on urban green infrastructure and the ecosystem services it provides, from the point of view of residents involvement and the use of their experiential knowledge. Empirical data were gathered in the Helsinki metropolitan region in 2007 using semi-structured expert interviews and a survey. In the interviews, 16 public officials, 6 decision-makers, and 11 stakeholders, including 8 active members of resident or nature associations and 3 land property owners, discussed their views on and experiences with collaborative planning of land use and management and development of nature areas. The survey was sent in 2002 to actors who had participated in collaborative urban forest planning groups in Helsinki in 1995-2002, with responses subsequently received from 33 planning authorities, 43 other authorities, and 354 residents (62.5%). The findings address five themes: 1) the need for and 2) quality of collaborative planning, 3) its evaluation and design, 4) challenges related to ways of thinking, and 5) ways to improve usefulness of collaborative planning for different parties. The need was specified with a typology of needs for residents input and by clarifying the role of the input at normative, strategic, and operative levels of policy-making and planning. The quality of collaborative planning was addressed with success criteria for a collaborative planning process, linked with quality aspects at the system level. A framework was developed for addressing the use of the criteria for evaluation and design purposes. Ways of thinking were addressed by developing a typology on ways to value experiences in relation to ecological issues and combining it with a typology on ways to think about the role of residents participation. Ways to improve usefulness of collaborative planning were identified based on the findings of the four other themes. The main contribution of the thesis to research and planning practice is the set of methods developed: the framework for evaluation and design of collaborative planning, the typology of needs for residents input, and the typology of ways of thinking regarding the relation of experiences and ecological issues. These methods can be used to inspire target setting, in design and evaluation of collaborative planning of urban green infrastructure in urban contexts, and partly in collaborative planning more generally. Residents input is necessary for value guidance for policies and plans, for planning cultural ecosystem services and cultural dimensions of other ecosystem services, for making green infrastructure functional from residents point of view, for enhancing capacities for production of well-being benefits, and for assessing how policy-making and planning succeed in supporting residents well-being and these capacities. In integrating various knowledges in planning of urban green infrastructure, the way of thinking which sees the relation of experiences and ecological issues as depending on scales can be particularly useful because of the scale-dependent nature of ecosystem services. In systems such as that in Finland, usefulness of collaborative planning could be improved by strengthening the use of experiential knowledge at the normative level, including clarifying in the norms the role of residents input and the responsibilities of officials and decision-makers in taking the input into account. This would be supported by developing guidelines that specify principles for defining and studying essential benefits of green infrastructure and its ecosystem services in different types of cases, including what types of information need to be used when and which spatial, temporal, social, and ecological contexts must be considered in defining stakeholders and benefits and conditions for service provision. Moreover, usefulness of collaborative planning could be improved by building awareness of implications of different ways of thinking for the outcomes of planning in different types of cases; by designing the participation consciously with attention to its role in sense-making and knowledge-building at the system and process levels; by making more out of the obtained information by interpreting it from different perspectives and directing it to processes in which it can be used; and by supporting continuous learning with evaluation and follow-up.

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