Designing Resilient Cities by Ecosystem Service Mapping

Dear colleagues,

We are glad to present a Sustainability Special Issue entitled Designing Resilient Cities through Ecosystem Service Mapping.

The paradigms of ecological planning are widely discussed in the scientific community; nevertheless, their practical operationalization through spatial maps, indicators and an ecosystem assessment for community benefits is less common in practice and far from being achieved, also due to the lack of knowledge and awareness of its potential to represent the spatial distribution of biophysical values in the landscape. Martinez-Harms et al. (2015) demonstrated that only a few studies (3%) operationalize the ecosystem service framework to support land use planning and decision-making processes. Moreover, a real procedure to integrate ecosystem services (ESs) into spatial planning while supporting decision-making processes is still limited to a handful of good practices and experiments (La Rosa, 2019).

As the authors point out, the ecosystem concept is often mentioned or referred to in plans and projects; however, practitioners and decision makers' spatial mapping methodologies defining a real appropriation of the ES paradigm are still lacking. The reason for this weakness has been outlined by Cortinovis and Geneletti (2018), who highlighted that the spatial assessment of ESs at the appropriate scale and resolution by multi-functional urban green infrastructures (GIs) is still needed (Cortinovis and Geneletti, 2018). Therefore, understanding the spatial context is a key issue for future urban plans, which would benefit from an ES spatial assessment and GI design. Recent experiences have demonstrated how an ES assessment could support the multi-scalar deployment of GIs, facilitating their integration into planning tools and making ESs functional to the needs of planners and decision makers (Ronchi, 2021). These cases showed how the spatial biophysical assessment of ESs through spatial modelling makes a difference when dealing with the scale of urban planning and the issue of mitigation/adaptation to climate change associated with land transformations. The proper utilization of GIS models can assist, inform, and help assess biophysical ES provisions and its spatial distribution in a spatially explicit manner, while also considering the interaction between threats and source elements through high-resolution assessments.

Beyond these experiences, the gap between the practical application of the ES framework through plans and projects and the scientific/theoretical advancements in the ES assessment remain unfilled, a potential reason being that the operational framework of an ES is related to the definition of land use decisions using value transfer methods and expert-based judgment, often referring to specific case studies; hence, far from representing a context-specific assessment for local plans and implementation projects. Therefore, ES assessment techniques based on spatial maps and indicators are increasingly replacing literature-based parameters, thereby providing a tangible framework around ES implementation useful for ES-based planning.

Within this Special Issue, we welcome innovative studies, research advancements, and practitioners’ experiences in the “operationalization of the ES framework”. With the term “operationalization”, we refer to some basic pre-conditions to bridge the gap between the theoretical knowledge of ESs and their utilization in urban planning and for broader planning purposes, while also assuming that: 1) the ES selection should be grounded on common “categorizations” (such as, for instance, CICES, TEEB, and MAES); 2) the assessment of the “service” is based on the spatial recognition of the biophysical structure of the landscape; 3) the “benefits” to the society are based on the interaction between the biophysical assessment of the services and the distribution of human demand; 4) the empirical evaluation of a long-term, sustainable provision of ESs is carried out through “changes by land-use scenario” associated with planning strategies defined into plans or programs.

We encourage contributions addressing case studies, practical applications, and innovative planning processes attempting to answer the following research questions:

1) To what extent are ESs spatially evaluated and integrated within plans and projects?

2) How have ES mapping and assessments affected planning processes?

3) How have ESs supported the definition of resilience strategies for cities?

4) To what extent is the demand of ESs incorporated in performance-based assessments?

5) How can the biophysical characterization of the land be used to support the design phase, i.e., defining potential alternatives, selecting viable choices, and determining decisions within planning processes?

5) What is the most performative scale of ES assessments useful for planning?

Therefore, we are looking for contributions that, besides attempting to answer the above research questions, specifically deal with the ES assessment in practice and its potential implementation within planning processes. The Special Issue seeks to discuss each of these questions, addressing some of the barriers and knowledge gaps around each topic, and providing examples of good practice from the established literature and current research, with the ultimate goal of advancing extant knowledge both for academics and for practitioners.

Prof. Dr. Stefano Salata
Prof. Dr. Silvia Ronchi
Prof. Dr. Sabrina Lai
Dr. Sila Özkavaf-Şenalp
Guest Editors

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• ecosystem services
• spatial planning
• performance-based planning
• spatially explicit models