8
Investigating the uptake of ES as a new planning paradigm may lead to overlook
the fact that urban plans have a tradition of accounting for - at least some – ES.
ES-inclusive approaches have routinely been used in planning, even though under
different names, as it clearly emerges from both planners opinions (Beery et al.
2016), and historical analyses of planning documents (Wilkinson et al. 2013). To
understand how the ES approach can contribute to improve the current planning
practices, it is necessary to identify which urban ES are addressed and how, and to
what extent the conceptual framework of ES is already integrated in urban plans. To
this aim, this chapter investigates the contents of plans by searching for explicit but
also implicit references to ES, and classifying the information based on their use
within the plan, as described in the next Section.
2.2 Methods to Analyse ES Inclusion in Urban Plans
We selected a sample of 22 recent urban plans of Italian cities (see Annex 1). Urban
plans in Italy are comprehensive spatial planning documents drafted at the municipal level, fairly similar in content to analogous documents around the world. Their
main tasks are: defining land-use zoning; designing and coordinating the system of
public spaces and public services; detailing and integrating regulations and provisions set by higher administrative levels. The plans were analysed through a directed
qualitative content analysis composed of the three steps described next.
2.2.1 Assessing the Breadth of Inclusion
We considered the following urban ES: food supply, water flow regulation and runoff mitigation, urban temperature regulation, noise reduction, air purification, moderation of environmental extremes, waste treatment, climate regulation, and
recreation. Following previous content analyses of urban plans (Geneletti and Zardo
2016; Woodruff and BenDor 2016), we identified three main plan components:
information base, vision and objectives, and actions. The information base component illustrates the background knowledge that supports planning decisions. The
vision and objectives component states the long-term vision of the plan and the
targets that the plan pursues. The actions component illustrates decisions taken by
the plan, including strategies and policies (projects, regulations, etc.) that are envisioned to achieve the objectives. Urban ES and plan components are cross-tabulated
in a table, which is filled for each plan under investigation by analysing both its
textual and cartographic documents, and reporting the relevant content. The number
of filled cells in the table allows measuring the overall breadth of inclusion of the
analysed ES. We adopted the formulation of the breadth score indicator proposed by
Tang et al. (2010) and later applied by Kumar and Geneletti (2015). We calculated
the breadth score both for the whole plans and for each component individually.
2 Reviewing Ecosystem Services in Urban Plans
Investigating the uptake of ES as a new planning paradigm may lead to overlook
the fact that urban plans have a tradition of accounting for - at least some – ES.
ES-inclusive approaches have routinely been used in planning, even though under
different names, as it clearly emerges from both planners opinions (Beery et al.
2016), and historical analyses of planning documents (Wilkinson et al. 2013). To
understand how the ES approach can contribute to improve the current planning
practices, it is necessary to identify which urban ES are addressed and how, and to
what extent the conceptual framework of ES is already integrated in urban plans. To
this aim, this chapter investigates the contents of plans by searching for explicit but
also implicit references to ES, and classifying the information based on their use
within the plan, as described in the next Section.
2.2 Methods to Analyse ES Inclusion in Urban Plans
We selected a sample of 22 recent urban plans of Italian cities (see Annex 1). Urban
plans in Italy are comprehensive spatial planning documents drafted at the municipal level, fairly similar in content to analogous documents around the world. Their
main tasks are: defining land-use zoning; designing and coordinating the system of
public spaces and public services; detailing and integrating regulations and provisions set by higher administrative levels. The plans were analysed through a directed
qualitative content analysis composed of the three steps described next.
2.2.1 Assessing the Breadth of Inclusion
We considered the following urban ES: food supply, water flow regulation and runoff mitigation, urban temperature regulation, noise reduction, air purification, moderation of environmental extremes, waste treatment, climate regulation, and
recreation. Following previous content analyses of urban plans (Geneletti and Zardo
2016; Woodruff and BenDor 2016), we identified three main plan components:
information base, vision and objectives, and actions. The information base component illustrates the background knowledge that supports planning decisions. The
vision and objectives component states the long-term vision of the plan and the
targets that the plan pursues. The actions component illustrates decisions taken by
the plan, including strategies and policies (projects, regulations, etc.) that are envisioned to achieve the objectives. Urban ES and plan components are cross-tabulated
in a table, which is filled for each plan under investigation by analysing both its
textual and cartographic documents, and reporting the relevant content. The number
of filled cells in the table allows measuring the overall breadth of inclusion of the
analysed ES. We adopted the formulation of the breadth score indicator proposed by
Tang et al. (2010) and later applied by Kumar and Geneletti (2015). We calculated
the breadth score both for the whole plans and for each component individually.
2 Reviewing Ecosystem Services in Urban Plans