Sustainable Blue-Green Infrastructure: A social practice approach to understanding community preferences and stewardship

Lamond, Jessica; Everett, Glyn

Abstract

© 2019 Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) is an approach to urban flood resilience, recognised globally and in international literature, that capitalises on the benefits of working with urban green-spaces and naturalised water-flows. Literature reveals BGI's sustainable functioning and benefits-provision depend on the behaviour of those who use it, therefore local stewardship is often proposed to support maintenance. However, there is a gap in understanding the requirements and behaviours of users, as well as their potential for developing stewardship behaviours, that is not addressed through traditional analysis approaches based around demographics. Therefore, this research used correlation analysis of survey data from two locations in the UK to explore the potential contribution of Social Practice Theory (SPT) to improve such understanding. Results show statistically significant correlation (better than 1%) between performance of practices associated with urban BGI and attitudes towards BGI stewardship, whereas demographic variables showed little correlation. Reflection on the practices demonstrates that this connection is traceable through the meanings people attach to their practices, the benefits of BGI spaces as material to those practices and their competencies in relation to existing and proposed stewardship practices. Practices, it is proposed, have embedded behaviours and attitudes that transcend locational and demographic factors. These findings imply in a wider context that, for any proposed or existing BGI, understanding associated practices would improve targeting of stewardship-engagement towards users with compatible meanings and competencies. Furthermore, sustainable design of BGI would benefit from consultation with all identified user-groups in order to understand existing and potential practices.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 13, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Aug 27, 2019
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Aug 30, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 23, 2019
• Journal: Landscape and Urban Planning
• Print ISSN: 0169-2046
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 191
• Article Number: 103639
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103639
• Keywords: Ecology; Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law; Nature and Landscape Conservation
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/2615337
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103639
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: Sustainable Blue-Green Infrastructure: A social practice approach to understanding community preferences and stewardship; Journal Title: Landscape and Urban Planning; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.103639; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2019 Published by Elsevier B.V.
• Contract Date: Aug 30, 2019