Capstone Project Proposal 2020

Contribution of Green
Infrastructure to Enhance Urban
Resilience

By Arunima Rane
 Contents

Introduction of the Topic

1 Contribution of Green Infrastructure to Enhance
Urban Resilience

Research Methodology
2 The proposed methodology carrying out for study
and collecting or analyzing data from various
resources

Literature Review
3 Critical Analysis of Research Papers related to the
topic

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1. Introduction to the topic
Contribution of Green Infrastructure to Enhance
Urban Resilience
• Research Proposal
• Aim and Objectives
Research Proposal
How Green Infrastructure will Contribute to Enhance Urban Resilience?
• Cities are an important habitat for an array of physical, economic, social, political and cultural
capital. The issue of sustainability challenges facing cities are major concern.
• The uncurbed urbanization and climate change. The urban community are facing problems like
biodiversity and natural habitat loss, air pollution exceeding safe limits, and urban flooding.
• Traditional problems like rapid population growth, increasing demand for housing space, need for
support infrastructure (especially transport and sanitation).

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Research Benefits to
Urban life • Responding to these challenges such as
unprecedented urban growth lies in innovative
development of green infrastructure, which not only
ensures resilience, but also includes environmental
and well-being benefits.

• To deliver effective and efficient transition to

sustainable urban form that further enhances urban
resilience to multiple social, economic and
environmental stressors.

• Also, to deliver Cost saving benefits as compared to

gray infrastructure
Aim and Objective
• This research aims in the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in
practice for critical infrastructure sectors.
• To find out the impact on three parameters of sustainable development, socio-economic and
environmental
• To find out the key challenges of GI planning and how to overcome the barriers in urban
context which are identified.
• The main objective is to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure and to make
their decisions differently and help them in contributing to a safer and better world.

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What is Green
Infrastructure?
• Originally “Green” infrastructure is identified with
parkland, forests, wetlands, greenbelts, or floodways
in and around cities that provided improved quality of
life or “ecosystem services” such as water filtration
and flood control.

• Now, green infrastructure is more often related to

environmental or sustainability goals that cities are
trying to achieve through a mix of natural approaches.

• It is an essential living component that deliver

important benefits to people and places in both urban
and rural landscape.

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 What are the types of Green
Infrastructure?
Green Forms
• Represents natural elements built or
planted in urban environment
• Roof Garden, Green Walls,
• Urban Forests
• Front and Back yards
• Green Balconies
Green Spaces Green Corridors
• Represents land uses that utilize or protect • Represents land uses that utilize or protect
natural processes and functions natural processes and functions
• Parks and Plazas • Rainwater harvesting
• Sports and Recreational facilities • Passive irrigation
• Community gardens and natural areas • Rain Gardens
• Water catchment areas • Hardscape and Softscape
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What is Urban Resilience
Urban resilience is “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems
within a city to survive, adapt, and grow, no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks
they experience”
• With 70% of the world’s population likely to be living in cities by 2050, and with climate change making
weather and natural resource distributions more volatile, building resilience into our increasingly densely
populated urban environments is crucial to the safety of life and property.
• The climate change impacts threaten to urban infrastructure in cities through different internal and
external hazards (e.g., environmental, social, technological and economic),therefore enhancing resilience
of the structures, organizations and communities becomes a priority

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Benefits of Green • Improved water quality.
• Reduced municipal water use.
Infrastructure •
•
Ground water recharge.
Flood risk mitigation.
• Increased resilience to climate change impacts
such as heavier rainfalls, hotter temperatures, and
higher storm surges.
• Reduced ground-level ozone.
• Reduced particulate pollution.
• Reduced air temperatures in developed areas.
• Reduced energy use and associated greenhouse
gas emissions.
• Increased or improved wildlife habitat.
• Improved public health from reduced air
pollution and increased physical activity.
• Increased recreation space.
• Improved community aesthetics.
• Cost savings and Increased property values.

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Finding the effective measures
to adapt Green Infrastructure
to urban life
• Elements of green infrastructure to enhance
private commercial project and urban lifestyle.
• How green infrastructure measures helps in
financial benefits including higher rents and
property values, energy savings, and reduced life-
cycle and maintenance costs.
• Also identifying the project barriers and to
implement the GI planning to the project.

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2. Research Methodology
To achieve the outlined key of the Research:

• Various types of articles, research papers, journals, case studies, online

available books on green infrastructure, sustainable development, will be
referred.
• Literature Review will be a major part in analyzing the core concepts of
GI planning.
• Study of interviews of industry leads people discussing the current
scenarios and future strategies of green infrastructure.
• Identifying the challenges and targets of direct dependency on urban life
affecting the environment.
• Data will be analyzed by the findings and will be shown through visual
representations; graphs, pie-charts, photographs.
3. Literature Review
The 5 Research Papers has been reviewed for study are:

• Urban green infrastructure as a tool for controlling the resilience of urban

sprawl
• Green Infrastructure: concepts and planning
• Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st Century
• Spatial planning for multifunctional green infrastructure: Growing
resilience in Detroit
• Green infrastructure: planning for sustainable and resilient urban
environment
Urban green infrastructure as a tool for
controlling the resilience of urban sprawl
Author - José G. Vargas-Hernández & Justyna Zdunek-Wielgołaska
Published on 31st January 2020
• This paper aimed to analyze the existing relationships and controlling functions between the urban green infrastructures on the
resilience of the urban sprawl.
• The analysis begins questioning whether urban sprawl sustainable growth can be controlled after achieving urban supported by urban
green infrastructure.
• Resilience is a concept useful to understand and manage urban settlements as dynamic, complex and adaptive systems, Resilience is
the capacity of social, economic and environmental systems to cope with hazardous events, trend, and disturbances and responding
and reorganizing to maintain their essential function, identity and structure while maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning,
and transformation.
• Urban settlements must be encouraged to use green infrastructure approaches to address the management of the urban green and
open public spaces programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stormwater absorption, prevent water pollution, transform vacant
lots, impervious roofs and streets into urban green spaces and habitat for biodiversity.
• In Conclusion, the analysis suggests that a holistic approach is required to build urban resilience based on green infrastructure by
addressing a fuller range of ecosystem disturbances and disasters.
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Green Infrastructure: concepts and planning
Author - Ian C. Mell from Newcastle University
Published in 2008
• Green infrastructure planning has grown in prominence since it was first discussed in the late 1990’s. The number of diverse benefits in
different urban and urban-fringe landscapes, green infrastructure has been discussed as enabling planners to develop multi-functional,
innovative and sustainable places.
• The aim of this paper was to examine several diverse research areas that have attributed value to the ideas underpinning green
infrastructure planning. Using the subjects of urban regeneration and health, and climate change green infrastructure will be discussed
as a multi-faceted planning approach for constantly changing landscapes.
• The current research into green infrastructure can be broadly split into two categories; conceptual research and practical application.
• Despite the rapid rise in research into both the concept and delivery of green infrastructure doubt remains as to whether it can be fully
embedded into planning policy. Climate change, urban regeneration and better design are just three areas that have been suggested
where green infrastructure planning can promote the better places to work, live that planner’s can utilize to achieve their development
goals.
• Finally, this paper concludes by suggesting that with further funding and development green infrastructure planning can develop a more
mainstream profile and a set of criteria can be developed to provide planning solutions for health, climate change, regeneration or
environmental sustainability.
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Green Infrastructure: Smart Conservation for the 21st
Century
Author - Mark A. Benedict and Edward T. McMahon
Published in 2002
• Green infrastructure is an interconnected network of green space that conserves natural ecosystem values and functions and provides
associated benefits to human populations.
• Planning utilizing green infrastructure differs from conventional open space planning because it looks at conservation values in concert
with land development, growth management and built infrastructure planning.
• This paper introduces green infrastructure as a strategic approach to land conservation that addresses the ecological and social impacts
of sprawl and the accelerated consumption and fragmentation of open land.
• It describes the concept and value of green infrastructure and presents seven principles for successful green infrastructure initiatives.
• Every state and local government has a long-range transportation plan. Growing communities also have detailed plans for improving
their airports, sewage treatment plants, telecommunications facilities and other public infrastructure. Just as these communities need to
upgrade and expand their gray infrastructure, they need plans to upgrade and expand their green infrastructure.
• Investing in green infrastructure is often more cost effective than developing conventional public works projects.

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Spatial planning for multifunctional green infrastructure: Growing
resilience in Detroit
Author – Sara Meerow and Joshua P. Newell
Published in March 2017
• Cities are expanding green infrastructure to enhance resilience and ecosystem services.
• Green infrastructure is promoted for its multifunctionality, projects are typically sited based on a particular benefit, such as stormwater
abatement, rather than a suite of socio-economic and environmental benefits.
• Green infrastructure in Detroit is not being sited to maximize ecosystem services. A Green Infrastructure Spatial Planning (GISP) model
is developed and applied to Detroit.
• The model provides an integrated, stakeholder-driven approach to maximize ecosystem services.
• The Green Infrastructure Spatial Planning (GISP) model, a GIS-based multi-criteria approach that integrates six benefits: 1) stormwater
management; 2) social vulnerability; 3) green space; 4) air quality; 5) urban heat island amelioration; and 6) landscape connectivity.
• More broadly, it represents a spatial planning approach for evaluating competing and complementary ecosystem service priorities for a
particular landscape.

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Green infrastructure: planning for sustainable and resilient urban
environment
Author – Shikha Ranjha, DLGS-IOER-TU Dresden, Germany
Published in 2016
• Cities are an important habitat for an array of physical, economic, social, political and cultural capital. Climate change is inextricably
linked to the process of urbanization where traditional problems like rapid population growth, increasing demand for housing space,
need for support infrastructure
• Responding to these challenges such as unprecedented urban growth lies in innovative development of green infrastructure
• GI differs from other approaches in landscape planning because it considers ecological and social values in combination with other land
use developments
• The problem stated in the paper is that an urban context, mounting levels of urbanization creates a network of barriers that result in a
patchwork of land uses and isolated open space areas. Consequently, natural ecosystems become scattered across the landscape and
displaced by new land-use developments.
• Planning of green infrastructure here refers to policies and planning activity affecting urban GI, through processes of land use and
management and development of nature areas and elements.
• The Urban sustainability can be achieved by managing change or transition that directs development where sustainable development
works as a strategic tool that brings together a series of interests and stakeholders in the planning and development process
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• “The Green Infrastructure approach to land use is often more cost-
effective, more resilient and more capable of meeting the social,
environmental and economic demands of the 21st century.”  
 Thanks!
MBA CPM Batch 2019-21
Enrollment No. A70059019015
arunimar.mc19m@ricssbe.edu.in
RICS School of Built Environment, Mumbai

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