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Green spaces are a crucial element for quality of life in urban areas. They provide a bundle of ecosystem services that benefit humans (Elmqvist et al. 2013; Gomez-Baggethun and Barton 2013; Haase et al. 2014). For the future prospects of cities they are not only important for the health and well-being of their inhabitants, but also as a direct economic factor, e.g., to attract investors, companies, and employees. Thus, green (and blue) spaces are becoming increasingly decisive for providing a high quality of life in urban areas. At the same time, urban green infrastructure contributes to more effective and efficient solutions for urban challenges, compared to traditional technical (“gray”) solutions. There are many examples of their ecological and social superiority, although this has rarely been demonstrated in economic terms, i.e., in terms of a higher cost-benefit-ratio (see Naturkapital Deutschland – TEEB DE 2016; for water infrastructure, see Nivala et al. in this volume). As a consequence, urban green infrastructures have not or only insufficiently been taken into account by local decision-makers. Accordingly, they have only been implemented occasionally in urban planning processes. |
