Journal of Environmental Protection and Ecology 17, No 2, 737–746 (2016)
Environmental protection and sustainable development – landscape planning
LANDSCAPE ASSESSMENTS IN BARTIN (TR) VIA GREEN
INFRASTRUCTURE APPROACH
M. ARTARa*, S. GORMUSa, S. CENGIZb
a
Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Forestry, Bartin University,
74 200 Bartin, Turkey
E-mail: mustafa.artar@gmail.com
b
Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Fine Arts, Inonu University,
Malatya, Turkey
Abstract. Recent researches on a sustainable relationship especially in urban areas have been focusing on ecosystem services. Green infrastructure approach together with green networks, green roofs
and storm water management systems offers beneits for ecological, socio-cultural and economical
functions. Natural areas including rivers, coasts or forest that located in and around cities are valuable assets for the unity and sustainability of urban landscapes. According to European Commission,
waterfront cities which rivers pass through are ecologically valuable and those rivers are important
components of green infrastructure that providing ecosystem services for urban areas. The aim of
this study was to evaluate Bartin River and vicinity with regard to green infrastructure potential
and the role and beneits of Bartin River in urban ecosystem as a natural ecological corridor. Study
was carried out within 18 neighbourhoods in Bartin Municipality and covering 92 city parks on and
around Bartin River.
Keywords: green infrastructure, Bartin, parks, European Landscape Convention, riverscape.
AIMS AND BACKGROUND
Due to rapid increase in population and construction for urbanisation, cities of 21st
century change rapid and dynamically. When the cities change, different characters
of the cities also eventually change. On the other hand, rivers, green spaces and
natural areas in the cities limit the change of urban texture and urban development
and often function as important natural characters of the cities.
Recently, the climate change has become an important topic and brought more
emphasis on the urban water management and green infrastructure connections.
Due to the large hard surfaces, heavily built urban texture and the lack of water
management systems the number of natural disasters like looding increased enormously. Recently, Green infrastructure (GI) approach has become a critical issue
for experts for good urban development, landscape management and urban health.
*
For correspondence.
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The enhancement of green areas has the potential to mitigate the negative
impacts of urbanisation on natural environment in a sustainable way, making cities more attractive to live in and buffering urban sprawl. Nowadays, there is an
increasing societal support for more green space in and around cities1.
Urban green spaces provide essential ecosystem services and improve environmental quality of life. But open space networks are often fragmented by urban
development, and therefore, it is dificult to reclaim natural lands after they have
been built up2.
Benedict and McMahon3 discussed that green infrastructure contributes greatly
to the health and quality of life for America communities and people as a strategically planned and managed network of wilderness, parks, greenways, conservation
easements and working lands with conservation value that supports native species,
maintains natural ecological processes, sustains air and water resources.
Rouse and Bunster-Ossa4 suggested that GI is more than just implementing
measures at various scales, from green roofs and rain gardens to regional greenways and open space.
Literally, GI refers to an interconnected green space network including natural areas and features, public and private conservation lands, working lands with
conservation values, and other protected open spaces that is planned and managed
for its natural resource values and for the associated beneits it confers to human
populations. Term of green infrastructure describes a process that promotes a systematic and strategic approach to land conservation at the national, state, regional,
and local scales, encouraging sustainable land-use planning and practices3.
Benedict and McMahon3 claimed that GI helps to sustain forests, farms, and
other working lands and allows natural systems to function as intended, saving
communities millions of dollars in lood mitigation, water puriication. GI also
provides mental and physical health beneits as well as outdoor recreation, for the
inhabitants of the cities. It helps to protect valuable natural amenities by attracting
also tourists and visitors to the city.
A key question for planners and designers is how can we measure these beneits to demonstrate the value of green infrastructure brings to society? Besides
environmental and economic indicators, there are social (community) indicators
which include parks and open space access (typically measured in terms of walking
distance to the nearest resource), parks and open space equity (typically measured
in terms of distribution relative to demographics), public health outcomes, etc.4
Landscape Institute-UK stated that the role of GI in addressing the challenges
of the 21st century cannot be underestimated. GI is deined here as the network of
natural and semi-natural features, green spaces, rivers and lakes that intersperse and
connect villages, towns and cities. It is a natural, service-providing infrastructure
that is often more cost-effective, more resilient and more capable of meeting social,
environmental and economic objectives than ‘grey’ infrastructure5.
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There is a clear need that GI should be designed and managed as a multifunctional resource capable of delivering those ecological services and quality of
life beneits required by the communities that it serves and needed to underpin
sustainability. Design and management of GI should also respect and enhance the
character and distinctiveness of an area with regard to habitats and landscape types.
The European Landscape Convention (ELC) brings a holistic approach to the
landscape by the deinition as ‘…an area, as perceived by people, whose character
is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors’. The ELC
recognises the multifunctional value of our landscapes, which is fully consistent
with the green infrastructure approach. Recognition of landscape character is a
core part of Natural England Landscape Policy underpinning that retroitting and
creation of green infrastructure elements can contribute to the landscape strategies. Other elements of green infrastructure planning, such as education and public
participation, are also consistent with the aims of the ELC (Ref. 6).
GI can be broadly deined as a strategically planned network of high quality natural and semi-natural areas. More speciically, being a spatial structure GI
can foster a better quality of life and human well-being, enhance environmental
quality, improve biodiversity by reconnecting isolated nature areas and increasing
the mobility of wildlife across the wider landscape, prevent environmental disasters by alleviating loods, storing carbon or preventing soil erosion, encourage a
smarter, more integrated approach to development in as eficient and coherent a
way as possible7.
The types of physical features that contribute to GI are diverse, speciic to
each location or place and very scale-dependent. On the local scale, biodiversityrich parks, gardens, green roofs, ponds, streams, woods, hedgerows, meadows,
restored brownield sites and coastal sand-dunes can all contribute to GI if they
deliver multiple ecosystem services. They have an important function: to deliver
multiple beneits, or connect ecosystems, so that they can deliver their services8.
A green infrastructure typology covers:
● Parks and gardens – urban parks, country and regional parks, formal gardens;
● Amenity greenspace – informal recreation spaces, housing green spaces, domestic gardens, village greens, urban commons, other incidental space, green roofs;
● Natural and semi-natural urban greenspaces – woodland and scrub, grassland, heath or moor, wetlands, open and running water, wastelands and disturbed
ground), bare rock habitats (e.g. cliffs and quarries);
● Green corridors – rivers and canals including their banks, road and rail
corridors, cycling routes, pedestrian paths, and rights of way;
● Other – allotments, community gardens, city farms, cemeteries and churchyards6.
Demiroglu et al.9 articulated that green infrastructures in Kilis city, Turkey,
are not planned as an integrated system and their contributions to sustainable
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development of the city are quite weak. They found that as of 2013, with a total
population of 89 442 the city has a ratio of 3.65 m2 of active green areas per capita.
The 2nd International Conference ‘The New Generation of Green Infrastructure’ concludes that the green sustainable development is the only way for
the prudent use of natural resources and the environment for future generations.
Each state should encourage the Green Business and GI in order: (1) to promote
the development; (2) to reduce social inequality; (3) to limit the effects of climate
change; (4) to reduce environmental degradation; (5) to better manage the problems of the growing scarcity of raw materials; (6) to secure funding that will yield
long-term gains, and (7) to face the pressures of population growth10.
The focus of this research is to evaluate beneits and values of ecological corridors of Bartin River and vicinity, using GI approach and its contributions to urban
ecosystem based on parks and garden within Bartin Municipality. Resilience to
looding and economic outcomes with regard to proposed management system of
Bartin River is also discussed. Bartin River has been a passive recreation area as
well as an ecologically important site with biological richness of lora and fauna. As
the requested connection with active recreational areas has not been supplied with
corridors, the parks and open public spaces of the city could not serve as an input
of green infrastructure element11. Bartin River has a character of a network connecting rural and urban landscape which surrounds the city and accordingly more
emphasis will be given to ‘parks and gardens’ and ‘green corridors’ in this paper.
EXPERIMENTAL
This research was held within the borders of 18 neighbourhoods covering the given
list of parks by the Bartin Municipality (Fig. 1). Ninety-two parks are examined
for the study located in different neighbourhoods. Some sites, those double written
or parks and children playgrounds on military ground were eliminated from the
study. As a data set 1:25 000 scale Environmental Plan, beside 1:5000 and 1:1000
scales Construction Plans were used.
The methodology of our study covered 4 stages of analytical approach: (1)
ieldworks and visualisation; (2) green/grey surface relation and density; (3) identiication of park typology, and (4) proposals for green infrastructure.
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Bartin City
Fig. 1. Location of the study area
Fieldworks and visualisation. All 92 parks listed by the Municipality had been
visited and evaluated on site. The location and the borders of the parks were
recorded by Global Positioning System (GPS). Urban furniture and green-grey
interaction had been recorded via taking photos. Borders of the parks and the
area were controlled via overlay analysis with Arcview Geographical Information
System (GIS) 10.1 version and the Basemap of the software and the actual areas
of the parks were obtained.
Green space density. Park borders were overlaid with the neighbourhood so the
number of parks located in concerning neighbourhoods was obtained. Areas were
compared with the population living along the neighbourhood and green space
per capita was calculated.
Identiication of park typology. Green space and impermeable land of each park
was calculated. Due to this the ratios of green to grey were classiied by less than
40, 40–70, more than 70% were classiied as low-medium and high green spaces,
respectively.
Proposals for green infrastructure. In order to offer proposals for green corridors,
physical layout and data sets of 1:25 000 scaled Environmental Plan, 1:5000,
1:1000 scaled Construction Plans and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and current
Landuse-Landcover (LULC) map were used. Possible corridors were proposed
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between actual parks and planned green spaces with reclassiied DEM and the data
obtained had been overlaid with LULC.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Actual situation of the parks in Bartin. Relating to green infrastructure and user
density of public parks, population statistics in Bartin Municipality are given
in Table 1 and Fig. 2. According to the Address Based Population Registration
System (ADNKS) in 2014, the population of 18 neighbourhoods in Bartin is 63
253 people (Ref.12). The table reveals that the number of population below and
over +18 years of ages, number of parks and green spaces per capita along the
neighbourhoods (Table1).
Table 1. Neighbourhoods of Bartin, population and distribution of parks12,13
No Neighbourhood
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Total
Agdaci
Aladag
Cumhuriyet
Cayduzu
Demirciler
Esentepe
Golbucagi
Hurriyet
Karacay
Karakoy
Kemerkopru
Kirtepe
Koyortasi
Okulak
Orduyeri
Orta
Siremircavus
Tuna
Population
No of
parks
total
over
below
+18
+18
2622
2356
266
3
4714
3363
1351
7
2920
2131
789
7
3314
2413
901
4
3336
2452
884
3
2283
1613
670
7
7660
5762
1898
7
2688
1785
903
0
323
256
67
2
2412
1756
656
2
9692
7231
2461
15
3780
2982
798
8
1664
1399
265
3
1584
1263
321
0
6560
4909
1651
12
1881
1491
390
2
904
721
183
3
4916
3589
1327
7
63.253 47472 15781 92
Area of total Green space
green space per capita
(m2)
(m2)
2459.73
0.94
3611.78
0.77
3990.13
1.37
1871.53
0.56
713.33
0.21
6261.89
2.74
10162.93
1.33
0.00
0.00
16948.40
52.47
1210.76
0.50
16955.25
1.75
22138.62
5.86
26262.70
15.78
0.00
0.00
9561.12
1.46
2601.33
1.38
821.07
0.91
9493.07
1.93
135063.65
2.14
Green infrastructure assessment of Bartin City. According to the green/grey assessments in parks of Bartin city, it can be said that most of the parks are lack of
plant material, some of them have little amount of plant cover. There are 92 parks
listed by the municipality of which 37 have low green space, 29 medium and 26
high amount of green space with plant materials. Those are evaluated within the
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ieldworks and measured on ield due to the density of vegetation and hard landscapes. Parks with low level vegetation cover mostly related to children playground
basketball or volleyball areas. Some of them have outdoor itness equipments. This
fact is open to discussion about what are the beneits for green infrastructure. For
those parks just have hard surfaces without no plant material the other discussion
is that the use of the areas in all different seasons. As most of the playgrounds with
no green space locate close or in private residential sites most of them cannot be
used under hot climate conditions in the daytime of summer season. When evaluated in means of urban equipment quality, cleanness, health and security it can be
said that most of the parks are lack of clean areas with broken banks and rubbish
boxes. Figure 2 shows the distribution of parks in Kemerkopru neighbourhood
which has low-medium and high density of vegetation with planned green spaces.
Fig. 2. Distribution of parks in Kemerkopru neighbourhood of Bartin Municipality
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Most of the parks are not accessible for disabled people and many of them
have dangerous electricity transformer stations so close to children playgrounds.
Some are located under electricity power lines. Most of the parks fall into conditions that could not be evaluated as part of a GI system as they are totally located
under dangerous and unhealthy circumstances. Those areas might be evaluated as
a part of the system just only after revitalisation.
As seen in the construction plans, Bartin River forms an important ecological corridor in the city. Most of the parts of this corridor cannot be reached by the
people living around. This might be important for ecosystem services of the river
itself for lora and fauna but as seen from Table 1, green space per capita is only
2.14 m2 in Bartin even though the Construction Law describes it to be 10 m2 per
capita. Because of this fact the river banks and the corridor should be designed via
connections with other recreational areas of the city. Aladag neighbourhood has
the lowest green area per capita while Karacay neighbourhood with new landscape
design areas has the highest. Even though it has the highest amount per capita, that
does not cover the amount of 10 m2 of standard of the Construction Law.
Ecological corridor proposal. As described in the introduction excluding the
Bartin river itself, the green system of Bartin do not form an ecological corridor
which will feed the green infrastructure. So the methodology used in this paper
tried to form ecological network between planned green spaces and the actual
parks. Land use and land cover data which had been classiied by twenty classes
had been used as a base. The corridor had been formed via appropriate features
such as actual roads, agricultural areas, residential landscapes, the river corridor,
etc. Destinations are described due to appropriate slopes and actual parks had been
connected to planned green spaces.
There are many possibilities for green infrastructure applications in Bartin
city. Beginning from state buildings green roofs might bring an enormous solution
for the rainwater investment. Most of the residential areas are covered by high
grey walls and green wall applications might also be solutions for many parts of
the city. Bartin city along the Western Black Sea is famous for its lood during all
seasons. Little amount of rain in a short period might also cause lood problems.
The rainwater line which is connected to sewage should be evaluated in a different manner. So as to use the rain water effectively rain gardens might be solution
especially close to low attitudes. As the river rises which meant lood for the city
design techniques via thinking sustainable use of water should be considered. The
ponds after rain might be temporary wetlands and designed with natural vegetation
which will mitigate the unexpected results of the lood.
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CONCLUSIONS
Bartin city is well known with its loods. A vast lood in the Western Black Sea
region of Turkey in May 1998 caused great loss and caused signiicant damage.
Communication network, transportation, and construction cost of the disaster was
estimated around US $500 million. Rainwater management is an important issue
for the city. The lood exists in a very short and limited time as recent years brought
more alluvial material from highlands and the construction industry developed more
than expected. Green infrastructure approach is more important on such cases and
if GI is accepted as an approach, Bartin River might be not a problematic issue
than an important feature for recreation and tourism.
As the river in the past covered most of the characteristics of GI approach
which meant multifunctionality, connectivity, habitability, resiliency, identity, return on investment, it has a great potential. The river had been used for transport,
connected different aspects of the city, gave birth to ecosystem and gave its name
to the city. It is well known that GI offers cheaper solutions than traditional civil
engineering activities.
Even with just the pollination effect, green roofs and greenways have signiicant contribution to urban health. Green systems let energy save, water treatment
and better infrastructure planning capability.
The indings and comparisons with many case studies within Europe show
actual green spaces which are called parks by the local authorities do not cover
permeable pavements and roads, rain gardens, green roofs and roof gardens, rain
harvesting systems, road plantations, maintenance of landscape designs and wetland formations. There is also misuse of plant material especially at some of the
parks designed. GI approach is an important solution for cities living with loods
such as Bartin.
Landscape planning and design due to the characteristics of the cities themselves is an important approach. Regulations for secure life, healthy cityscapes
and happy nations might be supplied with interdisciplinary studies of green infrastructure approach. Grey infrastructure is assumed to be planned effectively if
only thought with interaction with the green infrastructure. Bartin River shows
an important ecological network feature and an important landscape character
for the region. The river with the ecosystem services might only be carried to
further generations with a common understanding of common understanding
with stakeholders. GI approach which offers for all actors of city management to
come together and plan the city might also bring effective results of increasing
total income for residents.
Acknowledgements. Authors wish to acknowledge Bartin University Scientiic Research Projects
Commission for support given to the Project coded 2013.2.102 and master students who have been
involved during the ield and ofice works.
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Received 11 February 2016
Revised 16 April 2016
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