Evaluating urban environmental and ecological landscape characteristics as a function of land-sharing-sparing, urbanity and scale

Dennis, M; Scaletta, KL; James, P

Abstract

Within urban landscape planning, debate continues around the relative merits of land-sharing (sprawl) and land-sparing (compaction) scenarios. Using three of the ten districts in Greater Manchester (UK) as a case-study, we present a landscape approach to mapping green infrastructure and variation in social-ecological-environmental conditions as a function of land sharing and sparing. We do so for the landscape as a whole and in a more focussed approach for areas of high and low urbanity. Results imply potential trade-offs between land-sharing-sparing scenarios relevant to characteristics critical to urban resilience such as landscape connectivity and diversity, air quality, surface temperature, and access to green space. These trade-offs are complex due to the parallel influence of patch attributes such as land-cover and size and imply that both ecological restoration and spatial planning have a role to play in reconciling tensions between land-sharing and sparing strategies.

Citation

Dennis, M., Scaletta, K., & James, P. (2019). Evaluating urban environmental and ecological landscape characteristics as a function of land-sharing-sparing, urbanity and scale. PLoS ONE, 14(7), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215796

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 19, 2019
• Publication Date: Jul 25, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jul 22, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 6, 2019
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215796
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215796
• Related Public URLs: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/