Thesis subject
MSc thesis topic: Urban Green Space and Infrastructure: Dynamics Across Dutch Municipalities
More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and this number is projected to increase up to 68% by 2050 (UN 2018). This urbanization brings with it a multitude of challenges, including the expansion of urban areas leading to the loss of natural vegetation and farmland. To counteract these losses, the current paradigm is to work towards densification, i.e., the increase of people per area unit within city boundaries (Haaland & van den Bosch, 2015).
At the same time, green spaces in urban areas continue to attract interest due to their regulating effects on urban climate (Graça et al., 2022), as well as other ecosystem services such as positive effects on people’s mental health (Callaghan et al., 2021). These urban planning interventions leading to the establishment of new urban green spaces also provide an opportunity to redesign pockets of urban spaces, considering the road and transportation infrastructure in cities (see e.g., Eggimann, 2022). In this research, we will evaluate, on the municipality level, how urban greenspace establishment has co-developed with changes in transportation infrastructure in the Netherlands.
Background
We will use publicly available spatial datasets (e.g. openstreetmap, pdok.nl) to assess the spatial and temporal change in urban green spaces and transportation infrastructure. Developing a script to automate the process, we will assess transportation infrastructure length and area, as well as area covered by urban green spaces. We will do so on the municipality level, starting with one of the municipalities as a test case, to scale the process up to multiple municipalities.
Objectives
- Analyze the length and area of transportation infrastructure in a city
- Analyze the change over time in transportation infrastructure
- Connect the observed change in infrastructure to the expansion of urban green infrastructure
Research Questions
- How did the length and area of transportation infrastructure change over time?
- What is the relationship between changing transportation infrastructure and the development of urban green spaces?
Requirements
- Geo-information Tools (optional)
- Geo Scripting (required)
- Strong Python scripting skills
Literature and information
- United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Urbanization Prospects 2018: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/421).
- Graça, M., Cruz, S., Monteiro, A., & Neset, T. S. (2022). Designing urban green spaces for climate adaptation: A critical review of research outputs. Urban Climate, 42, 101126.
- Callaghan, A., McCombe, G., Harrold, A., McMeel, C., Mills, G., Moore-Cherry, N., & Cullen, W. (2021). The impact of green spaces on mental health in urban settings: A scoping review. Journal of Mental Health, 30(2), 179-193.
- Eggimann, S. (2022). Expanding urban green space with superblocks. Land Use Policy, 117, 106111.
Expected reading list before starting the thesis research
- Hanna, E., & Comín, F. A. (2021). Urban Green Infrastructure and Sustainable Development: A Review. Sustainability, 13(20), 11498.
- Zhang, L., Chen, H., Li, S., & Liu, Y. (2023). How road network transformation may be associated with reduced carbon emissions: An exploratory analysis of 19 major Chinese cities. Sustainable Cities and Society, 95, 104575.
Theme(s): Modelling & visualisation; Human – space interaction