The role of green spaces and their management in a child-friendly urban village

Environmental child-friendliness is affected by how built environments and green spaces are planned and designed, but also by their ongoing management, including both development and maintenance. This study examined children’s perspectives on their local environments with focus on green spaces and their management in an urban village. Five groups totalling 16 children aged 10–11 were interviewed through child-led walks. Both the qualities of the village as a whole and of specific places within it added to the child-friendliness of the local environment. The children showed planned and managed spaces including playgrounds and parks, and unmanaged places such as abandoned gardens. They found many qualities in multifunctional planned places with a varied, rich content. In unmanaged areas the lack of management was seen as positive for exploration, play possibilities and for the place to be children’s own. The findings suggest that children’s perspectives can play an important role not only in planning and design, but also in the ongoing process of landscape management, including the provision of more variation in local green spaces.     

Economic development and natural amenity: An econometric analysis of urban green spaces in China

Rapid urbanization and spontaneous economic development has brought about profound changes in urban landscapes throughout the world. The task of managing transforming urban landscapes, particularly urban green spaces, so as to provide sufficient natural amenity for increasing urban populations, is one of the critical challenges facing policy makers. However, little empirical evidence exists about the evolving path of urban green spaces along with economic development and urbanization. This study attempts to fill in this knowledge gap through an econometric analysis of panel data across 285 Chinese cities during a period of rapid urbanization and economic growth (2001–2010). The results point to the existence of an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for an important aspect of environmental quality: urban green spaces. Urban green space coverage increases at the initial stage of economic development, and then it starts to decrease as GDP per capita exceeds RMB50,855 and then increases again at a high GDP per capita level (RMB107,558). Large elasticity (>1) is expected as GDP per capita grows to a higher level (beyond RMB128,095). By the end of 2010, 30% of Chinese cities are still located on the downward-sloping path and only four cities have attained elasticities greater than one. The findings present a challenging and pressing call for policy makers to effectively manage the tradeoffs between continuous economic development and better natural amenities.