Green Infrastructure for Asian Cities: The Spatial Concepts and Planning Strategies

Urbanization is a global trend, particularly strong in many Asian countries, Africa, and some Lain American counties now. Designing and planning for sustainable and low-carbon cities is a complex process addressing the fundamental areas of economic, environmental, and social-equitable sustainability. This paper focuses on the environmental aspect with theories and applications of green infrastructure to support ecological and physical processes in urban regions including: hydrology, biodiversity, and cultural/recreational activities. Green infrastructure is an interconnected network of waterways, hybrid hydrological/drainage systems, wetlands, both designed and natural green spaces, working farms and other cultural landscapes, and built infrastructure that provides ecological functions. Green infrastructure plans apply key principles of landscape ecology to urban regions, specifically: a multi-scale approach with explicit attention to the pattern and process relationship and an emphasis on connectivity. Although green infrastructure concept and practice are gaining popularity in North America, the UK, and Europe, its systematic application in Asian cities and urban planning policies is yet to be seen. Through the examination of five case studies of green infrastructure-like approaches to address urban greenspace planning issues in Japan, important GI principles are distilled and the lessons learned from these cases are used to develop specific recommendations to facilitate further application of the GI concept in Asian cities. GI is argued to become a useful greenspace planning tool to protect important and fragile green spaces, mitigate the lost nature, and create new green spaces in the city. Four general design and planning guidelines of green infrastructure are proposed. Based on the lessons learned from the case studies and the preceding argument, the paper concludes with recommendation of four areas of application of the green infrastructure concept to Asian cities.