Planning for Green Open Space in Urbanising Landscapes

Green open space is considered key social and environmental infrastructure for a sustainable city. Good planning when space is limited or being planned for new urban areas is therefore especially crucial. Green open space planning is generally based on local policies and guidelines and is rarely informed by empirical evidence. Furthermore, very little research has been conducted on the variety of values that communities assign to green open space. There is therefore a need to explore empirically how ecological landscape features relate to people's assigned values for these important community spaces. In this study we surveyed 418 residents of the Lower Hunter Valley region in NSW to explore how different values and activities are associated with various green open spaces. Map-based public participation GIS techniques were used to spatially define individual green open spaces and enable characterisation of participants' surrounding landscape. The assignment of values was analysed spatially and related statistically to both physical characteristics of the park and socio-demographics.