Essay On Urban Greening

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction

Urban Greening broadly refers to the integrated approach of planting, preserving and management of all forms of vegetation in cities and peri-urban areas for social, economic and environmental benefits (Byrne et al., 2010). Urban greening can be synonymously used with the term urban greenspace which refers to a broad variety of green areas within cities, (Roy et al., 2012). These include all types of parks, sporting fields, private backyards and gardens, street trees, spontaneous vegetation, infrastructure easements, cemeteries, green roofs, vacant lots, nature conservation and other spaces that provide opportunities for active and passive recreation (Harnik, 2010). These green spaces literally cover both public and private open spaces in a city mostly covered by vegetation (URGE Team, 2004). According to ecologists, economists, social scientists and urban planners, urban green space includes public and private open spaces in urban areas that are primarily covered by vegetation (Mazza, 2010). Recent studies refer to this concept as Green urbanism, defined as a practice of creating communities beneficial to human and the environment (Isaac, 2013). Green urbanism is an attempt to shape more sustainable places, communities and life styles in order to create cities that have functional ecological systems (Troy et al.,

This version of sustainable development has now been fused with social and economic development elements in order to create urban areas that continue to function into the future with less environmental degradation. Greening urban areas and sustainable development have a strong link in urban development and influence each other as shown in the figure