Considerations in the valuation of urban green space: Accounting for user participation

Dennis, M and James, P 2016, 'Considerations in the valuation of urban green space: Accounting for user participation' , Ecosystem Services, 21 (Part A) , pp. 120-129.

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Abstract

Within the ecosys­tem ser­vices frame­work, val­u­a­tions of nat­ural cap­i­tal have pri­mar­ily taken a land­scape-scale ap­proach. The gen­er­a­tion of trans­fer­able mon­e­tary val­ues for in­di­vid­ual ecosys­tems has like­wise de­pended on as­sess­ments car­ried out at large spa­tial scales. Such meth­ods, how­ever, lack ad­e­quate re­gard for com­plex nat­ural habi­tats. This com­plex­ity is height­ened in ur­ban ar­eas where green spaces pro­vide mul­ti­ple ser­vices ac­cord­ing to use and par­tic­i­pa­tion. Hence, there is a need to ac­knowl­edge the unique value of ur­ban na­ture, and the so­cially-me­di­ated na­ture of its pro­duc­tiv­ity. This need was ad­dressed through a study of col­lec­tively man­aged green spaces in a north-west Eng­land conur­ba­tion (UK). Ninety-one sites were iden­ti­fied, fol­lowed by a case study of twelve sites as­sess­ing their value across four ecosys­tem ser­vices. A sub­se­quent pro­jec­tion of the value of stake­holder-led land man­age­ment was cal­cu­lated and com­pared to an ex­ist­ing ref­er­ence for the value of ur­ban green space from The Eco­nom­ics of Ecosys­tems and Bio­di­ver­sity data­base. The study found that col­lec­tively man­aged sites con­tribute con­sid­er­able added-value to ur­ban nat­ural cap­i­tal. In ad­di­tion, the work high­lights the short­com­ings of ap­ply­ing trans­fer­able val­ues to multi-func­tional habi­tat types, call­ing for a closer con­sid­er­a­tion of so­cial-eco­log­i­cal con­texts in the val­u­a­tion of ecosys­tem ser­vices.

Item Type:	Article
Schools:	Schools > School of Environment and Life Sciences
Journal or Publication Title:	Ecosystem Services
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	2212-0416
Related URLs:	Publication
Funders:	Non funded research
Depositing User:	Dr Matthew Dennis
Date Deposited:	09 Aug 2016 08:24
Last Modified:	14 Nov 2016 15:01
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/39940

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