A review of green infrastructure research in

Europe: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract
Green Infrastructure (GI) is defined as a network of natural and
semi-natural areas strategically designed and managed to deliver a
wide range of ecosystem services and enhance human well-being.
In Europe, the GI concept has been strongly related to the concepts
of multifunctionality, climate change, and green growth, particularly
in the last decade, leading to a research and policy agenda that
varies greatly, targeting different audiences and topics. Here, we
provide an up-to-date review of the key characteristics of GI
research by focusing on the countries of the European Union. We
consider the conceptualizations of GI, key research priorities, and
thematic clusters within the existing literature. We demonstrate that
the ambiguous definition of GI has generated a high diversity in
research objectives and outputs. We also show that urban green
spaces and ecosystem services are the most frequent topics and
that more research is needed on the social aspects of GI. We
suggest that explicit incorporation of both nature conservation and
social-environmental justice goals is essential for GI research to
support sustainability transitions within and beyond the city.
Introduction
The concepts of bioeconomy, circular and resource-efficient
economy, sustainable development, and green and blue growth,
are key elements of the current environmental agenda in Europe
(Barbesgaard, 2018, Moffitt and Cajas-Cano, 2014). These terms
reflect the mainstream narrative according to which long-standing
conflicts between economic growth and environmental protection
can be resolved through consensual policies that aim to reconcile
opposing agendas by integrating environmental concerns in
decision-making processes (Apostolopoulou et al., 2014, Gomez-
Baggethun and Manuel Naredo, 2015).
Green Infrastructure (GI) is an indicative case of a concept and a
policy that reflects the above narrative, as expressed in its promise
to integrate various sectoral policies across different scales
(Artmann et al., 2017, Maes and Jacobs, 2017, Vandermeulen et
al., 2011, Wright, 2011). The GI approach first emerged in the USA
in the mid-1990s (Mell, 2010) but it has its origins in the 1850s, with
the first references to greenbelts in the United Kingdom (UK)
(Cohen-Shacham, Walters, Janzen, & Maginnis, 2016) and the
creation of public parks and open spaces in industrialized regions
for recreational and ecological purposes (Geneletti & Zardo, 2016).
The last decade, the term has received increased popularity. By
bringing forward an understanding of nature as ‘infrastructure’
(Thomas, 2010), it has been strongly related to the wider shift
towards the economic valuation of nature (Gomez-Baggethun and
Manuel Naredo, 2015, Maes and Jacobs, 2017) and the variety of
initiatives aiming to measure and calculate the value of ecosystem
services and natural capital (Apostolopoulou & Adams, 2015). This
is reflected in the European Union’s (EU) Green Infrastructure
Strategy, which was launched in 2013. The EU strategy defines GI
as “a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural
areas with other environmental features designed and managed to
deliver a wide range of ecosystem services” (COM (2013) 249
final). GI can refer to rural, peri-urban, or urban settings, covering
terrestrial, coastal, and marine areas (European Commission,
2013).
The idea of multifunctionality lies at the core of the EU GI Strategy
(European Commission, 2013). One of the key aims of GI according
to the strategy is to serve various goals for a wide range of
ecosystems crossing rural-urban divides, administrative scales, and
policy sectors (Hansen and Pauleit, 2014, Kettunen et al., 2014,
Madureira and Andresen, 2013, Newell et al., 2013). These include
climate change adaptation and mitigation, reduced energy use,
disaster risk management, food provision, biodiversity conservation,
health and well-being, recreation, increased land and property
values, competitiveness and economic growth, and the
enhancement of territorial cohesion (Coutts and Hahn, 2015,
Demuzere et al., 2014, Hehn, 2016, Kati and Jari, 2016, Tzoulas et
al., 2007). This variety is clearly reflected in the fact that GI is part
of a broad range of EU policies, including regional development,
climate change, agriculture, and forestry. GI also forms part of the
latest EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 (European Commission,
2010) and the EU environmental strategy on spatial planning and
land-use change (European Commission, 2013). This diversity has
been evident in recent EU funded projects that have focused on the
multifunctionality of GI while also exploring the conceptual
foundation of its urban elements and the development of nature-
based solutions (Hansen et al., 2016, Olafsson and Pauleit, 2018).
As it becomes obvious from the above, the concept of GI is so
broad that it often denotes different things to different actors,
including policy makers, researchers, and the wider public (Davies,
2006). This has led to varying and sometimes inconsistent research
agendas, priorities, and outputs and a quite diverse literature (Mell,
2014, Oliver et al., 2014, Wellstead et al., 2018, Xing et al., 2017,
Garmendia et al., 2016, Melissa Alane Barton, 2016). Importantly,
despite the inherent ambiguousness of the GI term (Garmendia et
al., 2016, Wright, 2011) and its wider recognition since the
announcement of a dedicated EU strategy in 2013 (Hehn, 2016,
Mell et al., 2017), research on how GI is conceptualized and how it
has been informing and driving research agendas in Europe is still
very limited. This hiatus perceives more significance given the
strong links of GI with the idea of ‘nature-based solutions’ that is
also rapidly gaining popularity (Eggermont et al., 2015, Kabisch et
al., 2016, Maes and Jacobs, 2017, Nesshöver et al., 2017).
To contribute to the above discussion, in what follows we provide
an overview of existing research on green infrastructure in Europe
with the goal to identify its key characteristics and trends over time.
In particular, by conducting an extensive literature review, our
specific research objectives are to: (i) determine the current state of
research on GI in Europe by analyzing its geographic scope,
methods, disciplinary focus, types of land and ecosystems, co-
authorship networks, and key research directions; (ii) explore
dominant conceptualization(s) of the GI concept and potential
research biases, and (iii) identify spatial and national patterns and
key thematic clusters in existing research on GI across different EU
member states.
Section snippets
Study area
Our analysis focuses on the 28 member states of the EU, including
the UK, since at the time of writing the country was still part of the
EU.
Literature review
We conducted a bibliographic review of the peer-reviewed literature
to compile a database of studies that investigate GI both from a
theoretical and an empirical point of view. We used Web of Science
to search for papers published between 1950 and 2019 that
included the term ‘green infrastructure’ in their title, abstract, or
keywords, and that referred to
Temporal evolution and authorship
The publication of academic papers on GI has been very limited
before the launch of the EU Strategy in 2013 but since then
demonstrated an exponential increase (Fig. 1). The majority of the
publications analyzed here referred to case studies in Germany,
Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Europe as a whole (59%; n = 115). For
some member states (7%; n = 13), only one to four papers were
published focusing on GI (Fig. 2).
Geographical scope
Most publications (59%) focused on the local scale with the study
area often located
Discussion
In the previous sections, we identified the key characteristics of
research focusing on GI in countries that are EU member states.
This included information on co-authorship networks, research
methods, types of land use and ecosystems, conceptualizations of
GI and thematic clusters. This kind of information is particularly
useful for emerging and diverse areas of research, such as GI,
because it can shed light on the different research and policy
agendas that may emerge from broadly defined
Acknowledgements
Elia Apostolopoulou has been supported by the Hellenic Foundation
forResearch and Innovation (HFRI) and the General Secretariat for
Research and Technology (GSRT), under the HFRI Fellowship
grant entitled ‘From the “right to the city” to the “right to
nature”:Exploring environmental movements in the era of the
Anthropocene as pathways to social‐ecological sustainability’
(GSRT code 235, KE 275 ELKE).