Seminar: "The luxury and legacy of urban green infrastructure", by Celina Aznarez

Celina Aznarez will be giving a seminar at ICTA-UAB. This seminar will be an online event, you will be emailed a Zoom link via email once you have signed up to the event.

 

Title: "The luxury and legacy of urban green infrastructure. Assessing luxury and legacy effects on urban patterns of tree canopy, biodiversity and ecosystem services"

Speaker: Celina Aznarez, PhD researcher at BCNUEJ/ICTA-UAB
 

Date: Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Time: 3PM CET
Location: online https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-luxury-and-legacy-of-urban-green-infrastructure-tickets-529146771237?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
 

The heterogeneous distribution of urban canopy and biodiversity in urban landscapes may cause their uneven access and distribution among dwellers. Poor access to nature and related benefits aggravate socio-environmental injustices and reinforce the decoupling of cities from ecosystems. Hence, accounting for biophysical and social factors driving patterns of canopy cover and biodiversity in cities is key to addressing potential socio-environmental injustices. Here we analysed how socioeconomic and demographic factors at the neighbourhood scale influence the spatial distribution of urban canopy, biodiversity and ES in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a European “green capital”. We tested the luxury (based on wealth) and legacy (neighbourhood development age) effects on urban canopy cover and biodiversity spatial patterns. We modelled regulating ES (runoff control, air pollution removal, carbon sequestration and urban heat control) from the public tree city inventory in iTree Eco tool, and we tested if ES supply is driven by the socioeconomic effects across the neighbourhoods. We found a positive association between tree diversity and high educational attainment, supporting a luxury effect. Neighbourhood age was negatively associated with tree diversity and cadastral value, suggesting a limited pool of tree species in older neighbourhoods and a shift in the preference of urban dwellers towards newer areas. ES were strongly positively associated with a higher percentage of green coverage per neighbourhood, without being directly related to luxury or legacy effects. This study constitutes a novel approach to how biodiversity and related ES distributional dimensions can be influenced by structural and socioeconomic feedbacks. We highlight how assessing urban biodiversity patterns and related ES can contribute to informing equitable and just urban planning.

Researcher description

Celina holds a Licentiate degree in Environmental Management from the University of the Republic (Uruguay). She is interested in the connection between urban ecological quality to well-being and its feedback on environmental inequalities. In 2020, she was awarded an INPHINIT fellowship from the “La Caixa” foundation (2020) to join the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) and ICTA-UAB to develop her PhD thesis. In her doctoral research, she explores the biodiversity contributions sustaining urban green infrastructure multifunctionality in ecosystem services provision through the lens of environmental justice.

In previous research, she addressed the socio-cultural valuation and distribution of ecosystem services in a gentrified coastal landscape in Eastern Uruguay, for which she obtained the first prize for the (degree) thesis category, in the National Urbanism Prize (2019), awarded by the Uruguayan Ministry of Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment.

Her latest publication is: “Aznarez, C., Svenning, J. C., Taveira, G., Baró, F., & Pascual, U. (2022). Wildness and habitat quality drive spatial patterns of urban biodiversity. Landscape and Urban Planning, 228, 104570.”