Koh, Y.F.; Loc, H.H.; Park, E. Towards a “City in Nature”: Evaluating the Cultural Ecosystem Services Approach Using Online Public Participatory GIS to Support Urban Green Space Management. Sustainability2022, 14, 1499.
Koh, Y.F.; Loc, H.H.; Park, E. Towards a “City in Nature”: Evaluating the Cultural Ecosystem Services Approach Using Online Public Participatory GIS to Support Urban Green Space Management. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1499.
Koh, Y.F.; Loc, H.H.; Park, E. Towards a “City in Nature”: Evaluating the Cultural Ecosystem Services Approach Using Online Public Participatory GIS to Support Urban Green Space Management. Sustainability2022, 14, 1499.
Koh, Y.F.; Loc, H.H.; Park, E. Towards a “City in Nature”: Evaluating the Cultural Ecosystem Services Approach Using Online Public Participatory GIS to Support Urban Green Space Management. Sustainability 2022, 14, 1499.
Abstract
Cultural ecosystem services has been increasingly influential in both environmental research and policy decision-making, such as for urban green spaces However, its popular definition conflates the concepts of ‘services’ and ‘benefits’ which made it challenging for planners to employ it directly for urban green space management. One the most widely used definition of this non-tangible ecosystem services are “functions of environmental spaces and cultural activities which may then result in the enjoyment of cultural ecosystem benefits”; yet the latter itself have never found its way into official laws and regulations. In this study, via a case study in Singapore, we propose new evidence to re-evaluate and re-position the two of the most important emerging concepts in managing the green spaces in urban areas. Using the transdisciplinary mixed methods of public participation GIS and social media text mining analysis, a wealth of cultural ecosystem services and their associated benefits were reported. This was especially so with regards to recreational and aesthetic services and experiential benefits. Recommendations to improve the park were also suggested, alongside sharing of methodological considerations for future research. Overall, this paper recommends the employment of the redefined cultural ecosystem services conceptual framework to generate relational, data-driven and actionable insights to better support urban green space management, which is not only useful to Singapore governments but also world-wide relevant.
Keywords
Cultural ecosystem services; urban green space management; Singapore; public participation geographic information system; social media text mining analysis
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Ecology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
