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What Really Matters in Green Infrastructure for the Urban Quality of Life? Santiago de Chile as a Showcase City

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Urban Transformations

Part of the book series: Future City ((FUCI,volume 10))

Abstract

The built, green and social environment express the situation of a city and, to a large extent, indicate the development of the urban area. These components of the urban environment have a strong impact on the quality of life of citizens. Along with the concepts of resource efficiency and resilience in cities, the quality of life forms one of the three pillars on which our research on urban transformations is grounded. We approach the concept of quality of life from the environmental perspective and understand the human well-being as an integral part of the broader concept of quality of life. In this study we focus on green infrastructure (GI) as an indication for quality of life research. Here, we measure the extent to which people can access GI as a service and profit from this infrastructure for health-related and social dimensions (Scottish Executive 2005; Bognar 2005). Rapid urbanisation processes accelerate land-use changes that mostly go along with extensive urban land consumption and involve population developments. Such multi-dimensional changes in urban land use and land-consumption patterns are very dynamic and widely ramified. They can evoke unsustainable structures that entangle social-spatial differentiations which are discussed in the context of urban growth and shrinkage processes (see Haase et al. in this volume, dealing with urban dynamics, Seto et al. 2011; Kabisch and Kuhlicke 2014). As land is a limited and contested resource, it demands for infrastructural provision and, particularly with respect to urban quality of life and a sustainable urban development, for the provision of green infrastructure.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Ellen Banzhaf

  2. Department of Ecosystems and Environment, Faculty of Agronomy and Forestry Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CEDEUS), Santiago, Chile

    Sonia M. Reyes-Paecke

  3. Institute of Geography, Centre for Urban Sustainable Development, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Francisco de la Barrera

Authors
  1. Ellen Banzhaf
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  2. Sonia M. Reyes-Paecke
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  3. Francisco de la Barrera
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ellen Banzhaf .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban and Environment Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Sigrun Kabisch

  2. Department of Urban and Environment Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Florian Koch

  3. Department of Economics, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Erik Gawel

  4. Department of Urban and Environment Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Annegret Haase

  5. Department of Community Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Halle (Saale), Germany

    Sonja Knapp

  6. Department of Urban and Environment Sociology, Helmholtz Centre for Environment Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Kerstin Krellenberg

  7. Centre for Environmental Biotechnology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Jaime Nivala

  8. Centre for Environmental Biotechnology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Andreas Zehnsdorf

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Banzhaf, E., Reyes-Paecke, S.M., de la Barrera, F. (2018). What Really Matters in Green Infrastructure for the Urban Quality of Life? Santiago de Chile as a Showcase City. In: Kabisch, S., et al. Urban Transformations. Future City, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59324-1_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59324-1_15

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