Implementing multifunctional green-blue infrastructures in urban unused spaces to enhance landscape corridor interconnectivity by empowering ecosystem services

In a gradual urban gradient, landscape interconnectivity from urban areas to fringes is vital for many environmental and human-based activities and services; however, urbanism is creating fragmentation of the urban landscape per se. In this horizontal field of urbanization, the landscape has a newfound relevance, offering a multivalent and manifold medium for the making of urban form, in particular in the context of complex natural environments, post-industrial sites, and public infrastructure (Waldheim, 2006). Green-blue infrastructures (GBI) are the means to stop the excessive growth of grey parcels in addition to the potential to increase connectivity, mobility, and urban health. Unused lands or unused spaces, especially in urban fringes and within an urban area, are one of the best potentials to connect sprawled green landscapes in different city zones (Azhar et al., 2020).

The exponential growth of urban areas causes significant fragmentation and puts a strain on environmental services. Cities are almost occupied with various buildings that disconnect the interconnectivity between green-blue parcels, such as parks or artificial forests, whether inside the urban area or peri-urban. GBIs are able to enhance the interconnectivity between various parcels inside an urban area with the same services in the urban skirt and, to a broader extent, at regional and national levels; moreover, they will provide better ecological and ecosystem services and connect unused spaces that are isolated. Unused spaces have one good potential to perform as a corridor to reconnect the landscapes within a distant area in an urban area. In this context, the challenges facing post-industrial cities are what to do about abandoned factories, vacant workers’ houses, and redundant commercial strips. Another phenomenon in this context is how a city shrinks and recede back into the landscape.

Theoretical research in the case of urban unused spaces started approximately 30 years ago by Trancik (1986), who investigated the aspects and referred to them as ‘lost spaces,’ as such spaces were ill-defined, had no significant outlook, and had a negative impact on the built environment. Moreover, he argued that such spaces had no definite or measurable boundaries and created division in use through policies or zoning (Azhar et al., 2020; Trancik, 1986).

Green space and corridors also serve as excellent shelters for various species and are vital to maintaining biodiversity in the urbanized grey parcels area. Blue parcels, which can be considered artificial water storages, fish ponds, constructed wetlands, and rivers, are significant elements within an urban area. Different types of functions relate to blue parcels: recreational activities, water-sensitive urban drainage, a new shelter for various types of species, and a great source of carbon sink similar to Sponge cities in China.

Most of the comprehensive master and spatial planning for delineating these types of bio corridors needs thorough strategies.

As a result, urban sprawl will cause exponential fragmentation, and due to that, the disconnection of green-blue landscape services is one significant consequence. Thereby, the main approach in this dissertation will be to control this phenomenon and come up with solutions to tackle it.

In this project, the aim is to understand how GBI multifunctionality will influence the ecosystem services connection on a large scale from urban central areas to peri-urban and fragmented parcels. One possible way to achieve them is by multi-scalar analysis and multi-performative formulation through machine learning as a hybrid approach in landscape design with processes to transform the fabric of urban areas and change the fragmentation.

In other words, conceptually, the methodological approach has three discrete steps in the past concerning green-blue corridors and green patches, the present, and the final output as a model to see the impacts on future alterations in relation to circular cities and global warming.