Considerations in the valuation of urban green space : accounting for user participation

Dennis, M; James, P

Abstract

Within the ecosys­tem ser­vices frame­work, val­u­a­tions of nat­ural cap­i­tal have pri­mar­ily taken a land­scape-scale ap­proach. The gen­er­a­tion of trans­fer­able mon­e­tary val­ues for in­di­vid­ual ecosys­tems has like­wise de­pended on as­sess­ments car­ried out at large spa­tial scales. Such meth­ods, how­ever, lack ad­e­quate re­gard for com­plex nat­ural habi­tats. This com­plex­ity is height­ened in ur­ban ar­eas where green spaces pro­vide mul­ti­ple ser­vices ac­cord­ing to use and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Hence, there is a need to ac­knowl­edge the unique value of ur­ban na­ture, and the so­cially-me­di­ated na­ture of its pro­duc­tiv­ity. This need was ad­dressed through a study of col­lec­tively man­aged green spaces in a north-west Eng­land conur­ba­tion (UK). Ninety-one sites were iden­ti­fied, fol­lowed by a case study of twelve sites as­sess­ing their value across four ecosys­tem ser­vices. A sub­se­quent pro­jec­tion of the value of stake­holder-led land man­age­ment was cal­cu­lated and com­pared to an ex­ist­ing ref­er­ence for the value of ur­ban green space from The Eco­nom­ics of Ecosys­tems and Bio­di­ver­sity data­base. The study found that col­lec­tively man­aged sites con­tribute con­sid­er­able added-value to ur­ban nat­ural cap­i­tal. In ad­di­tion, the work high­lights the short­com­ings of ap­ply­ing trans­fer­able val­ues to multi-func­tional habi­tat types, call­ing for a closer con­sid­er­a­tion of so­cial-eco­log­i­cal con­texts in the val­u­a­tion of ecosys­tem ser­vices.

Citation

Dennis, M., & James, P. (2016). Considerations in the valuation of urban green space : accounting for user participation. Ecosystem Services, 21(Part A), 120-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.08.003

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 3, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Aug 13, 2016
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Aug 9, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 13, 2017
• Journal: Ecosystem Services
• Print ISSN: 2212-0416
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 21
• Issue: Part A
• Pages: 120-129
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.08.003
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2016.08.003
• Related Public URLs: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecosystem-services/