Given the challenges posed by rapid urbanization and global warming, outdoor thermal comfort has become crucial for urban livability. However, there is a lack of field survey-based research on large-scale thermal comfort assessment across continuous urban spaces. To address this gap, this study developed a framework for assessing outdoor thermal comfort. A total number of 668 onsite observations from

Studies of parks underscore the significance of park equity, considering both its quantity and quality. However, the vulnerability of peri-urban communities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic concerning park utilization, goes beyond what objective assessments of access and quality can capture. Based on a multidimensional and comparative framework and combining objective evaluation and subjective

Urbanization is one of the main drivers of biotic homogenization in bird communities worldwide. Yet, only a few studies have addressed its functional consequences on the top-down control birds exert on insect herbivores. We hypothesized that their inconsistent results reflect the overlooked heterogeneity of the urban habitat for birds, and in particular the distribution and diversity of urban trees

Urbanisation generally leads to a loss of taxonomic and functional diversity in almost all animal taxa, yet a mosaic of highly variable habitats within the urban matrix could offer a diversity of insect prey to highly mobile predators such as bats. We therefore asked if insect-feeding bats change in trophic interactions along rural–urban gradients.

Audience segmentation can be used to identify target audiences in environmental public engagement and communication, but few studies have used segmentation to study biodiversity conservation behavior. This study used segmentation to better understand perceptions and behaviors around different types of actions related to native plant gardening. With a United States representative survey (n = 1,200)

Flower gardens can create valuable habitat for urban pollinators, but little is known about the existing spatial pattern of gardens on the landscape, or factors associated with the decision to plant a flower garden. We mapped the distribution of front yard flower gardens compared to four other front yard landscaping types (lawn, shrubs, non-vegetated, and weeds) across 86,429 addresses in Greater Boston

The biodiversity of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is increasingly under threat due to anthropogenic stressors and climate change challenges, despite 15.72% of the landscape being planned as protected areas (PAs). The uncertain risks of high-density urban sprawl and sea level rise pose challenges for future biodiversity conservation in the GBA. To effectively gauge the impact

Peri-urban landscapes experience conflicting land-use demands from co-occurring urban–rural drivers. In England, Green Belts are urban containment policies which impact on the peri-urban in isolation from the wider landscapes they cover. Green Belts’ endurance in planning policy have resulted in a contentious and politicised policy arena, under significant scrutiny. Whilst research has shown heterogeneous

Given the constraints on local budgets and the availability of urban land, understanding how different urban green spaces are valued by diverse residents is crucial for making informed urban land use decisions. We estimate the heterogeneity in housing price capitalizations of various open space classes in New York City using a hedonic price model. Our findings reveal that the capitalization of open

Rapidly advancing urbanization increasingly deepens cities’ interdependencies with surrounding suburban and rural territories, leading to unique planning challenges. Yet, there is limited comparative understanding of how urban–rural linkages are practically addressed through spatial planning. This study explores the extent and variety to which urban–rural linkages are integrated into both statutory

Global urbanization has resulted in a dense concentration of population in cities worldwide. In Asia’s densely populated cities, the existence of “Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)” facilities is essential for public infrastructure development. However, most NIMBY facilities, such as cemeteries, funeral parlors, electrical towers, garbage dumps, and gas stations, are directly exposed to the urban environment

The complex social-ecological dynamics of homelessness in natural resource management have become increasingly apparent in recent years. Systematically understanding and engaging with these dynamics across sectors, disciplines, and landscapes has presented a conceptual and methodological challenge for both practitioners and researchers. Though some interdisciplinary research has expanded in recent

Climate-driven hazards, such as extreme heat or precipitation, are threatening the current and future livability of New York City (NYC) and disproportionately affecting low-income communities and communities of color. To envision future climate resilience, government stakeholders and researchers co-produced future scenarios for 2100 in response to climate hazards for NYC during participatory workshops

Optimised contributions of green infrastructure (GI) to urban ecosystem services are strongly related to its multifunctionality. The challenge, however, is that the concept of multifunctionality still needs to be transformed into an operationalised assessment to evaluate current performance, which is instrumental in supporting spatial planning and policy strategies. Using the case of Stavanger City

Over the last four decades, global temperatures have seen a generalized, long-term increase, and Europe is at the forefront of this trend, with temperatures rising by over twice the global average in the past 30 years. And the problem of excessive heat exposure is disproportionately more serious urban areas than it is in rural areas. This study investigates the issue of thermal inequality in Southern

As countries continue to urbanize, an increasing number of adolescents will live in densely populated urban areas, often residing in high-rise buildings. Despite these trends, many high-rises, and their surrounding areas, sparsely consider the needs of adolescents. This results in urban environments that are often ill-suited to sufficiently support the health and development of adolescents. In the

Ecological network (EN) is a popular approach for biodiversity conservation, which aims to facilitate animal movement between habitats. However, asymmetric movement caused by the subjectivity of animals and environment heterogeneity is seldom considered in EN design. To design EN based on asymmetric movement, an individual-based model, PDArunner, is developed, which can identify corridors based on

Though the existence of socioeconomic segregation in social interactions has been consistently documented and compared across cities in a growing body of literature, less attention has been paid to within-city analysis of the types of places at which particularly integrated or segregated interactions occur. Dependencies between socioeconomic profile, residential location, preferences and behavior make

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public urban greenspaces were sought as places of respite. However, deep inequities surfaced regarding who had access to safe high-quality greenspaces. The Park Perceptions and Racialized Realities study explored the experiences of racialized people in public urban greenspaces in Toronto, Canada.

With the bulk of the global population now living in cities, creating a cool, green refuge through extensive urban forests is a priority. However, we are concerned that tree species currently growing in our cities may not tolerate future climates. Esperon-Rodriguez et al. (2024) recently presented an estimate of ‘climate risk’ for a given tree species in a given location using a climate safety margin

In urban environments, invertebrate communities are subjected to a broad mixture of impacts, including diffuse pollution. Pollutant mixtures and habitat degradation can combine to apply stress on community diversity. Water quality is influenced by the assemblage and mosaic of catchment land cover. Amongst a wider suite of Nature-Based Solutions, the value of urban woodland is increasingly recognized

Recent years have seen an increasing emphasis on peri-urban parks (PUPs) in urban green spaces (UGS) development, However, little is known about how PUPs moderate overall UGS accessibility and contribute to environmental justice, particularly for high-density cities. To address this salient gap, the present study examines the overall urban green space accessibility, the moderating effects of PUPs,

Urban landscape perception is essential for understanding the interaction between individuals and the built environment, impacting urban space quality improvement. This study bridges the gap in comprehending the mechanisms, processes, and content of landscape perception that previous studies have not fully addressed. By integrating urban landscape studies with the biological vision process, a new theoretical

Neighborhood environmental conditions (NEC) refer to various environmental factors that are associated with individuals’ well-being (WB). Most existing studies, however, did not account for the complex interdependence among various NEC components in their effects on WB. This study aimed to use a network approach to examine the associations between NEC and WB during the COVID-19 pandemic. A population-wide

Ecosystem service (ES) evaluation is usually based on the stocks of natural resources and their functions. However, the value of ES in the urban area depends on human activities more than the existence of natural resources. This research implements an indirect market method by integrating hedonic housing price model to assess ES in urban context from both objective (remote sensing) and subjective perspectives

Urban nature is widely known to provide wellbeing benefits to people and communities, but evidence particularly from diverse and disadvantaged contexts suggests that these benefits are not experienced equally by all. This paper unpacks this complexity by focussing on how urban nature is interacted with to produce relational wellbeing on two diverse inner-city housing estates undergoing regeneration

Peri-urban areas are essential for human habitation and provide significant green spaces to improve the thermal environment, especially when urban land is limited. Understanding the factors influencing the cooling intensity of peri-urban parks is crucial for guiding decision-making in climate-responsive urban planning and management. However, relevant studies generally focus on the short-term cooling

In high-density urban areas, pocket parks offer significant potential to mitigate thermal discomfort. However, the specific contributions of horizontal and vertical canopy structures to pocket parks’ cooling and thermal comfort effects remain unclear. This study addresses this gap by selecting 14 typical pocket parks in Shanghai and collecting high-resolution canopy and thermal data using unmanned

Urban green areas are a potential supplier of air quality regulation service. However, research to date has mostly focused on the effects of the amount of these areas, with few studies evaluating how configuration aspects, such as spatial fragmentation, affect air quality services. Even less is known about how this service varies with decreasing pollutant emissions. Here we fill these research gaps

Meander restoration has become a commonly advocated solution in flood-prone or ecologically degraded river networks. The long-term impact of such measures on the stability of the landscape at the catchment scale beyond the implementation site itself is critical to project success and for sustainable catchment management and needs to be considered by all stakeholders. It is challenging, however, to

Wild nature in cities can allow urban residents to experience and connect with nature close to their homes. Previous research has shown that wild nature areas (WNAs) can be found in various urban greenspaces, such as remnant vegetation in forests, wild corners in parks, or spontaneous vegetation on informal sites. However, little is known about their usability for urban residents and their potential

Access to parks, ecosystem services, and urban trees support healthy people and communities. Unfortunately, access is often unequally distributed, leading to differential outcomes. Measuring the within-city distributional equality and comparing between cities can be facilitated by the Gini Index, a measure originally developed for economic disparities. To examine its applications in urban forestry

Ecosystem restoration is critical in attaining land degradation neutrality (LDN) by fostering synergistic relationships between land use patterns, ecological processes, ecosystem services, and sustainable development, i.e., the “pattern-process-service-sustainability” cascading pathway. However, a comprehensive investigation examining the ecosystem restoration required to achieve LDN within the “p

To address the growing challenges urban sprawl poses, it is essential to understand its influence on urban transportation, a primary source of economic, social, and environmental impact. This study fills this gap by quantifying the consequences of sprawl on transportation efficiency, proposing an interdisciplinary methodology that integrates knowledge from operations research.

The emerging recognition of the importance of urban habitat and wildlife for increasing biodiversity, driven partly by responses to climate change and urbanization, presents critical opportunities for urban biodiversity conservation and species recovery. However, effectively communicating these benefits to the public and policymakers remains a challenge for scientists and landscape architects with

Urban trees provide several vital social and environmental services. Within the field of urban planning, tree information is currently usually obtained through expensive and time-consuming fieldwork. This research presents a multi-algorithm methodology that extracts urban tree information, including tree location, absolute height, crown perimeter, and species (group) from airborne laser scanning (ALS)

How can green spaces smaller than 1 ha improve outdoor thermal conditions in urban neighbourhoods? Considering the variability of cooling effects based on the relevant urban design parameters of size, shape, and spatial distribution, this study entailed development of different design scenarios combining these parameters for four neighbourhood typologies and simulates the thermal sensation of these

While increasing studies acknowledge the potential of green spaces to alleviate urban environmental problems in high-density cities, there is growing attention to the socio-spatial inequalities in green space allocation. Few studies have assessed these inequalities by considering the green space coverage along citizens’ walking trips from their homes within the context of pedestrian-centric and mixed-residential

Urban green space (UGS) plays a vital role in enhancing the resilience and livability of cities. However, the distribution and accessibility of these spaces often vary significantly within and between cities, raising concerns about environmental justice and social equity. This study aims to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of UGS and assess population exposure and equality implications across eight

Effectively managing apex predators in human-modified landscapes poses considerable challenges. Habitat fragmentation disperses resources across wider expanses and undermines the ability of apex predators to reach isolated habitat patches as they traverse multi-tenured landscapes comprising unsuitable habitat. Understanding a species response to landscape configuration is key to informing effective

Coastal landscapes are rapidly changing due to both climate change and the decisions of waterfront landowners. For instance, the climate-driven encroachment of woody mangrove species into grassy marshland areas is predicted to impact coastal ecosystems, with consequences for the ecosystem services these landscapes provide to people. However, there is a dearth of knowledge concerning coastal resident

Urban tree canopy (UTC) cover is rarely distributed equitably across social groups, space, and time. Over the past 20 years, research on the social, spatial, and temporal dynamics of UTC has grown considerably as municipalities adopt ambitious tree canopy cover goals. Yet less is known about how these three dimensions of tree canopy intersect. This paper brings these research areas together by examining

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading causes of death globally. Exposure to greenspaces has been proposed to be beneficial for CVDs. However, past studies have often overlooked how varying levels of urbanicity may differently impact the relationships between greenspaces and cardiovascular health. Moreover, different types of greenspaces uniquely affect people’s behaviors and psychological

Eleven primary schools in Barcelona were adapted to cope with the effects of climate change under the framework of a European program. Green (vegetation), blue (fountains), and gray (shade structures) interventions were implemented in the schoolyards in 2020. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of these schoolyard transformations on students’ health and its social determinants. A mixed-methods

Exposure to green spaces is known to enhance residents’ physical and mental well-being, making accurate assessment of individual green exposure crucial. Traditional research often relies on fixed residential-based assessments, neglecting individual daily mobility, which can lead to estimation biases known as neighborhood effect biases, including the neighborhood effect averaging problem (NEAP) and

For some, golf courses are green oases of nature, while others see only toxic scars on the landscape. This review develops a less dichotomous approach by synthesizing all research on avian use of golf courses. Comparisons with other habitats reveal that golf courses have higher species richness due to attraction of species adapted to human-dominated landscapes, including non-natives. However, species

Land use changes can drive distinct spatial and temporal shifts in community structure. In urban areas, the historical trajectory of land use changes can create a time lag between landscape modification and their impact on species, potentially leading to an extinction debt. The detection of an extinction debt may be crucial for mitigating taxonomic and functional diversity losses in the future. Here

The impact of factors such as the built environment, road vehicles, and air quality on urban vitality attracts increasing interest in urban planning and design research. However, tacit assumptions of linear relationships between these factors have been embedded in most studies, leading to biased estimations of their effects on urban vitality. This study addresses the gap by using machine learning models

Ecological connectivity is increasingly acknowledged as crucial for biodiversity conservation. Iverson et al. suggest that increasing stewardship to ensure permeability is a better approach than protecting linkages between protected areas. We argue that the optimal approach depends on the landscape context, conservation goals, and species involved and suggest that linkage plans can prioritize specific

With the expansion of global population and rapid development of urbanization and lighting technologies, artificial light at night (ALAN) has caused increasing negative impacts on the dark sky observation, which has aroused wide concern on the protection of dark sky in the world. Dark skies have great natural, cultural, aesthetic, and economic values, and construction of dark sky places is an effective

Many methods have been applied to quantify urban ecosystem services (UESs) in the past two decades. Timely reviews of UES assessment methods are necessary for tracking the methodological progress and identifying research gaps. In this study, we systematically analyzed 862 to reveal the overall trend of quantitative studies of UESs, the types of ecological structures and UESs assessed in those studies

Metacommunities are the set of local communities that are linked by the dispersion of potentially interacting species. The study of metacommunities is important to elucidate the relationship between processes that occur at different spatial scales. However, bird metacommunities in urban parks have been little studied. The objectives of this study were: 1) to analyze the relative role of species dispersal

As urbanisation increases, wildlife is more likely to be exposed to humans. Although human disturbance is the main cause of biodiversity loss, some wildlife thrives in anthropogenic environments. Such species show increased behavioural tolerance to humans, which plays an important role in human-wildlife coexistence. However, whether wildlife modulates tolerance differently between regions and cities

1.In the context of global urbanisation, urban green spaces (UGS) serve as the primary means of direct contact with nature for many people. The design and management of urban parks should aim to maximise their ecological functions and services, while considering the well-being and connection with nature of urban residents. Despite extensive research into the factors that influence urban dwellers’ appreciation

Natural environments are changing with shifts in fire regimes. A little-understood impact is change to the interactions people have with forests. Generally, forests invoke positive feelings, but wildfire changes both forests and people’s experiences of them. These were investigated with attention to the ever-changing physical characteristics of fire-adapted forests. In a mixed method approach, interviews

Although the availability of natural space is found to be associated with the reduction of neighborhood-level violent crimes, such relationship is often confounded by heightened public surveillance in such spaces. Using satellite remote sensing data and official crime record, we examined the extent to which natural space coverage and population-weighted exposure were associated with assault crime rates

Understanding how mobility-based green space exposure influences momentary wellbeing is vital to promote life quality. Based on a survey conducted in 2017 characterizing residents’ daily activities and environmental pollution exposure in Meiheyuan Community of Beijing, we use Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Green View Index (GVI) to gauge the amount and visibility of exposure to green

Walking and high-quality walking environments are essential for sustainable and healthy cities. Walkability depends on both objective environmental features and perceived aspects. However, less is known about how the interplay between objective and perceived walkability influences walking behaviour across different urban contexts. We conducted a spatially explicit comparison of walkability and walking

Strategic planning approaches are essential for addressing the complex and multi-dimensional challenges in selecting blue-green infrastructure (BGI) location. The development of planning support systems (PSS) for BGI siting often lacks a value-based approach with early stakeholder engagement. In this study, we used value-focused thinking (VFT) to adapt and develop a BGI planning support framework to