Promoting Environmental Resiliency and Justice through Urban Blue and Green Spaces

Dear Colleagues,

Urban blue and green spaces offer numerous ecosystem services and social benefits by integrating nature-based solutions into city life. However, the manner in which these spaces are defined, described, designed, managed, distributed, and viewed by residents, urban planners, and government agencies continues to evolve. Green space may include public parks, urban gardens, woodlands, play areas, riparian zones, green alleyways and parkways, and some coastal parks. Blue space, as an urban design term, refers to visible water, including coastal parks, rivers and canals, ponds and lakes, ports, and pools and fountains. Recent studies have shown the benefits of adding and maintaining these spaces to offset some of the detrimental effects of intense city development. Green spaces can increase the sense of community and minimize air pollution, noise pollution, and heatwaves, which can also improve public health, reduce stress, connect residents with accessible nature, and sometimes increase the value of adjacent and nearby property. Blue spaces, frequently designed in combination with green spaces, reduce flood frequency and intensity, lessen the dependence on stormwater and wastewater infrastructure, offer recreational and aesthetic benefits, and can actually have a more positive psychological impact on people than other urban spaces, including green spaces.

This Special Issue seeks to bring together researchers from a diversity of disciplines in order to provide a multidisciplinary perspective of the interactions between urban green and blue spaces and the physical, socio-economic, and cultural landscape. While the body of literature on this topic continues to grow, this Special Issue welcomes a diversity of case studies, creative viewpoints and solutions, or innovative techniques that focus on the unique relationships between green and blue spaces and relevant environmental, social, economic, or cultural variables. The outcomes of this Special Issue could offer new ways to visualize and describe the dynamics of urban green and blue spaces, connect environmental and social justice concerns, or lack thereof, to these spaces, and improve design approaches, such as considering the needs of marginalized residents and communities, for both shrinking cities and expanding metropolitan areas. It is also expected that an interdisciplinary collection of works can enrich current knowledge and practices of green and blue spaces in urban environments.

Prof. Dr. Jacob Napieralski
Dr. Paul Draus
Guest Editors

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