Incorporating users’ adaptive behaviour in urban green space planning

NUS ecologists have developed a valuation framework that incorporates users’ demand for green urban spaces to assess the benefits provided by their ecosystem services (ES).

Urban green spaces contribute a variety of ES that are relevant to human well-being and mental health, such as air purification, noise reduction, cooling and recreation. The value of ES is typically presented as static ‘“snapshot” maps, capturing the parameters in a given time frame. However, static maps have limited value for urban planning as the ES value is also determined by the interplay between the supply and demand of such services. These influencing factors may vary over time and are usually dependent on human behaviour.

The research team led by Associate Professor Roman CARRASCO from the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore showed that incorporating human behaviour in the valuation of green spaces results in a different set of optimal locations for urban planning purposes. Using Singapore for their study, their simulation results show that, after accounting for residents’ visiting behaviour towards green spaces, their optimal locations shifted from areas with high residential density to those located near the eastern central part of Singapore, which still offer a short travelling distance for the residents. Adding in an element associated with visitor experience, termed as “crowdedness”, the optimal regions for locating green spaces change slightly to divert the flow of visitors to other parts of the country to prevent losses from “crowdedness” at these spaces.

The modelling framework developed in this study provides a more comprehensive approach for estimating the change of ES by taking into account the adaptive behaviour of users requiring such services. The researchers used techniques such as choice experiment, travel cost method and spatial simulation to estimate changing demands from urban users. The choice experiment provides an estimation of the preference of users towards certain ecosystem attributes. It showed that ambient temperature reductions provided by green spaces are valued by users but this value decreases when they need to travel further distances to enjoy them. If the green spaces are heavily visited and are frequently crowded, their value also reduces.

The first author of the journal paper, Ms YAN Yanyun said, “The research findings highlight the importance of incorporating human behaviour towards green space demand, based on distance and crowdedness, to capture the complexity of human-nature relationships.”

Prof Carrasco said, “This study suggests that the adaptive behaviour of urban users plays a significant role in determining the value of green spaces in our living environment.”

Figure 1: The conceptual framework of the study which includes ES supply, demand and flow based on six attributes used in the choice experiment to capture the adaptive behaviour of green space users. [Credit: Resources, Conservation and Recycling]

Reference

Yan Y*; Jaung W; Richards DR; Carrasco LR*, “Where did the ecosystem services value go? Adaptive supply, demand and valuation of new urban green spaces” RESOURCES, CONSERVATION AND RECYCLING Volume: 187 Pages: 106616. DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106616 Published: 2022.