How Do Spatial Patterns Impact Regulation of Water-Related Ecosystem Services? Insights from a New Town Development in the Yangtze River Delta, China

Jieqiong Wang, Siqing Chen and Min Wang
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Jieqiong Wang: College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Siqing Chen: Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3010, Australia
Min Wang: College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-21

Abstract: Scientists have made efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ecosystem service valuation and mapping; yet little actual implementation of new ecosystem service knowledge has been delivered in practice. We explored this gap by developing a spatially explicit and semi-qualitative evaluation approach to clarify how the spatial patterns of new town developments impact three types of water-related regulating ecosystem services, namely water flow regulation, flooding mitigation, and water quality regulation. Based on peer-reviewed publications, we identified key indicators with spatial characteristics that practitioners care about and have control of. We investigated the case of Lingang, a satellite city of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta, and found that (1) 85.30% of the pre-urban East Lingang with native marshlands performed better holistically while 93.06% of the post-urban East Lingang using the man-made lakeside model performed poorly; (2) 82.47% of the double grids model at West Lingang performed poorly in pre-urban time, while some major waterways were improved by the Hydrological Planning; and (3) a major weakness in the planning process was the ignorance in conserving pre-urban ecological resources, preventing the provision of ecosystem services. Finally, four urban design principles of both large-scale land use considerations and finer-scale design implications were proposed.

Keywords: regulating ecosystem services; water; spatial pattern; planning and design; new town development; Yangtze River Delta (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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