Towards Green(er) Cities: Contextualizing Green Benefits for Urban Spaces and Contemporary Societies

Juaneé Cilliers
Additional contact information
Juaneé Cilliers: School of Built Environment, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Urban Planning, 2021, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-3

Abstract:

There is an expanding understanding of the value and critical need for green(er) cities. It comes at a time when green spaces are depleting on a global scale, in order for cities to host the majority of the world’s population. The contest between diverse land-uses is inflating the pressure on already strained resources, intensifying the growing carbon footprint and impairing water quality, and compromising health and overall quality of life. Soon our cities will be far removed from the safe, clean, and liveable environments, as envisioned in planning theory, if we continue with business-as-usual. There is an increasing scientific appreciation of the interrelated role of green land-uses, the value of our environment and its related ecosystem services, which acts as catalyst to realise the objectives of broader sustainability. Although literature is clear on the importance, role, benefits, and impact of green(er) cities, the realisation of the greening initiatives in practice is still limited, and more should be done to embed green(er) thinking as part of mainstream urban planning. Urban spatial transformation is needed to reclaim nature for cities and to enhance the direct and indirect benefits that nature provides to contemporary societies. This thematic issue considered various trans-disciplinary approaches to provide a way forward in the quest of prioritising the notion of green(er) cities, while drawing on a range of evidence-led initiatives.

Keywords: contemporary societies; future cities; green benefits; sustainability; urban spaces (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/4821 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v6:y:2021:i:4:p:1-3

DOI: 10.17645/up.v6i4.4821

Access Statistics for this article

Urban Planning is currently edited by Tiago Cardoso

More articles in Urban Planning from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().