Urban Blue Spaces Planning and Design for Water, Health and Well-Being

This book presents an evidence-based approach to landscape planning and design for urban blue spaces that maximises the benefits to human health and well-being while minimising the risks. Based on applied research and evidence from primary and secondary data sources stemming from the EU-funded BlueHealth project, the book presents nature-based solutions to promote sustainable and resilient cities.

Numerous cities around the world are located alongside bodies of water in the form of coastlines, lakes, rivers and canals, but the relationship between city inhabitants and these water sources has often been ambivalent. In many cities, water has been polluted, engineered or ignored completely. But, due to an increasing awareness of the strong connections between city, people, nature and water and health, this paradigm is shifting.

The international editorial team, consisting of researchers and professionals across several disciplines, leads the reader through theoretical aspects, evidence, illustrated case studies, risk assessment and a series of validated tools to aid planning and design before finishing with overarching planning and design principles for a range of blue-space types.

Over 200 full-colour illustrations accompany the case-study examples from geographic locations all over the world, including Portugal, the United Kingdom, China, Canada, the US, South Korea, Singapore, Norway and Estonia. With green and blue infrastructure now at the forefront of current policies and trends to promote healthy, sustainable cities, Urban Blue Spaces is a must-have for professionals and students in landscape planning, urban design and environmental design.

Open Access for the book was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 666773

The Open Access version of this book, available at

www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9780429056161, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Foreword Michael Depledge Introduction Simon Bell, Lora E. Fleming and James Grellier PART ONE: Water, blue space and health and well-being: The evidence base and how to use it CHAPTER 1: Blue space as an essential factor in environment and health George P. Morris, Himansu S. Mishra and Lora E. Fleming CHAPTER 2: Potential benefits of blue space for human health and well-being Mathew P. White, Lewis R. Elliott, Mireia Gascon, Bethany Roberts and Lora E. Fleming CHAPTER 3: Co-design with local stakeholders Mart Külvik, Mireia Gascon, Marina Cervera Alonso de Medina, Lewis R. Elliott, Jekaterina Balicka, Frederico Meireles Rodrigues and Monika Suškevičs PART TWO: Tools, indicators and models for planning and design CHAPTER 4: Generating evidence in support of site planning and design: The BlueHealth toolbox James Grellier,Himansu S. Mishra, Lewis R. Elliott, Susanne Wuijts and Matthias F. W. Braubach CHAPTER 5: Assessing the land-water environment Himansu S. Mishra, Katrin Saar and Simon Bell CHAPTER 6: Observing behaviour for site planning and design Peeter Vassiljev, Cristina Vert and Simon Bell CHAPTER 7: Capturing affordances for health and well-being at the city scale Gloria Niin, Peeter Vassiljev, Tiina Rinne and Simon Bell CHAPTER 8: Assessing city-wide and local health and wellbeing benefits Lewis R. Elliott, Matthew P. White, Wilma Zijlema, Cristina Vert and Peeter Vassiljev CHAPTER 9: A decision support tool for optimising blue space design and management for health Arnt Diener, Marco Martuzzi, Francesco Palermo, Laura Mancini, Giovanni Coppini and Matthias F. W. Braubach PART THREE: Inspirational practice for planning and design CHAPTER 10: Reviewing the evidence for good planning and design Himansu S. Mishra, Simon Bell, Jekaterina Balicka and Anna Wilczyńska CHAPTER 11: Urban river revitalisation Friedrich Kuhlmann, Jekaterina Balicka and Anna Wilczyńska CHAPTER 12: Seafronts, beaches, lakeside, and promenades Simon Bell, Himansu S. Mishra, Anna Wilczyńska and Jekaterina Balicka CHAPTER 13: Urban wetlands and storm water management Himansu Mishra, Simon Bell, Anna Wilczyńska and Jekaterina Balicka CHAPTER 14: Docklands, harbours and post industrial sites Simon Bell, Anna Wilczyńska and Jekaterina Balicka CHAPTER 15: Tactical urbanism, urban acupuncture and small-scale projects Jekaterina Balicka, Joanna Tamar Storie, Friedrich Kuhlmann, Anna Wilczyńska and Simon Bell CHAPTER 16: Future outlook studies: the use of scenarios to create healthy blue cities Judith Hin and Susanne Wuijts APPENDIX: A blue space typology

Simon Bell is a professor of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia, and Associate Director of the OPENspace Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Lora E. Fleming is a professor and Chair of Epidemiology, Oceans and Human Health and Director of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK.

James Grellier is a research fellow at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter Medical School, UK, and a senior scientific fellow at the Institute of Psychology at the Jagiellonian University, Poland.

Friedrich Kuhlmann

Mathew P. White is a senior scientist in environmental psychology at the University of Vienna, Austria.