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MSc Thesis AMS Institute - Revaluing City Trees: Using i-Tree Eco to make the urban green infrastructure a guiding principle for urban (re)development

MADE Student Project

Green in the city has been recognised as a crucial strategy to maintain a climate adaptive and liveable future urban environment and has many ecosystem services (ES). Especially trees have environmental, social and health benefits for the city. However, urban green infrastructure (UGI) has been found fragile in urban (re)development areas. This research focusses on the value of trees and how the tool i-Tree Eco could support in making UGI a guiding principle for urban (re)development.

References can be found inside the document.

This research illustrates the position of green, substantiated with a literature review and interview results. Results show that the quality of green is the most important value to preserve, but that ES are not insightful at the moment. Besides, the whole planning process regarding urban development is not set to UGI. Tree Eco was used in a case study to assess its potential for urban redevelopment projects. This tool estimates the ES of trees and was used to explore different scenarios and forecast functionalities. It has been found that solely estimating the ES of green is insufficient for supporting the position of UGI. Therefore, further analysis or comparison of the estimates is necessary. In conclusion, policy guidelines need to be created to imbed the position of green in the urban planning process. i-Tree Eco could contribute to making ES of trees insightful by creating more awareness, setting threshold values and comparing different designs. Further research is needed to expand the Dutch version of i-Tree Eco to estimate more ES. 

Author: Niek van der Steeg

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Header image: Climate Resilient Cities | copyright IOOR

Icon image: AMS Institute logo vierkant rood

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