Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management Vol. 14, No. 2 (June 2012) 1250008 (48 pages) © Imperial College Press DOI: 10.1142/S1464333212500081

ECOSYSTEM SERVICES CRITERIA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN URBAN REGIONS

TARJA SÖDERMAN*, LEENA KOPPEROINEN and PETRI SHEMEIKKA Finnish Environment Institute SYKE P.O. Box 140, FI-00251 Helsinki, Finland * Tarja.soderman@ymparisto.fi

VESA YLI-PELKONEN Department of Environmental Sciences University of Helsinki P.O. Box 65, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland

Received 2 January 2011 Revised 29 March 2011 Accepted 10 May 2011 The ecosystem services criteria for strategic decision-making combine conceptualisation and concretisation of ecologically sustainable development. A concrete basis for the measurement, valuation, and assessment of ecological sustainability was created through the development of two-level criteria for ecosystem services, which were linked to indicators based on spatial and statistical data from the Monitoring System of Spatial Structure (MSSS) and the CORINE Land Cover database. The criteria were designed for middle-sized urban regions because urban areas face the greatest land changes, threats, and management and cooperation needs related to maintenance of ecosystem services. Two urban regions were piloting the criteria in an iterative process between researchers and project groups of urban planners. Data availability and poor capacity to deliver data for the regions affected the choice of final indicators. This highlights the need for development of planning tools for practical planning and impact assessment for ecological sustainability of all urban regions. Keywords: Ecosystem services; urban region; sustainability criteria; land use planning; sustainable development.

*Corresponding

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Introduction The concept of sustainable development was first described by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). However, the concept of sustainability is hard to define in a way that is meaningful and sufficiently practical to allow its operationalisation. Problems surrounding sustainability are usually complex and multidimensional and call for broad, exploratory problem-solving strategies resulting in solutions that are essentially “consensual” or adequate, not necessarily ultimate, best or optimal (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2008). Assessment processes can and do make valuable contributions to sustainability. Gibson (2001) sees environmental assessment processes as being among the most promising avenues for sustainability criteria, because they are, among other things, anticipatory, forward-looking, integrative and flexible. Pope et al. (2004) suggest that sustainability is a societal state, or perhaps more realistically a series of societal states, with particular characteristics or conditions that can be defined via sustainability criteria. Thus sustainability assessments should allow society to decide what is meant by sustainability and then to compare initiatives against this definition. This requires clear characterisation of sustainability by translating it into specific sustainability criteria (Pope et al. 2004). The principles of sustainable development have been operationalised for political decision-making by means of sustainable development indicators (Rosenström, 2009; Spangenberg et al., 2002; Kohti kestäviä valintoja, 2006). However, there is a lack of use of these indicators, because users are unaware of indicator sets. Moreover, there are a number of reasons why the indicators often do not match user needs: because of irrelevance of the indicators to the policy needs; technical shortcomings in the context and presentation; failure to engage users in the indicator development process; non-existent dissemination strategies and a lack of institutionalisation of promotion and updating of the indicators (Rosenström, 2009; Lyytimäki et al., 2011). It appears that most indicator processes are standalone processes of knowledge production that the developing organisation has envisaged will be used by other organisations/users without any consultation and not linked to the planning and decision-making at hand and their goals for sustainability. Indicators can serve as means to operationalise the criteria but they have to be linked to the planning and its problem at hand.

Planning and Assessment of Ecological Sustainability Sustainable development embodies the idea that the output of ecosystem goods and services should be maintained (Haines-Young, 2000; Potschin and Haines-Young, 1250008-2

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

2008). Thus ecological sustainability can be interpreted as long-term functionality of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are defined as “the benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions” (Costanza et al., 1997). Ecosystems generate these services, and each ecosystem generates a number of different services simultaneously (Bolund and Hunhammar, 1999). Biodiversity at genetic, species, population and ecosystem levels contributes to maintaining these functions and services. The services take place on different spatial scales from local to global, depending on the issue they are connected with. For example, carbon sequestration can be a global or national service, while scenic or recreational benefits are always local services. The sustainable land-use structure supports the ecological, social and economic processes required so that it can deliver goods and services required by current and future generations (Opdam et al., 2006). The idea of ecosystem services is a highly anthropogenic one, because it is based on the perceptions of benefits and drawbacks (e.g. Lyytimäki and Sipilä, 2009) that people get from ecosystems. The concept of ecosystem services and its linkages to biodiversity and human well-being is presented in Fig. 1. Threats to ecosystem services: Land use changes, climate change,use of natural resources

Biological diversity: Genetic level

Ecosystem services:

Human well-being:

Provisioning– e.g., raw materials, food, and water

Material basis

Regulating– e.g., nutrient cycles and air purification

Safety

Health

Species level Ecosystem level Landscape level Composition Structure

Cultural– e.g., recreational benefits and aesthetic values

Good social relations Freedom of choice

Key processes

Prerequisites for maintaining biodiversity: Natural habitats, ecological connections, and green infrastructure

Fig. 1. Ecosystem services and their prerequisites, threats, and meaning (adapted from MA, 2005; de Groot et al., 2002). 1250008-3

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Urban development poses a great risk for the ability of ecosystems to provide these services (Colding, 2011; Niemelä et al., 2010). The consequences of urban sprawl are increased commuting distances, traffic, pollution discharge, and the fragmentation of ecologically and culturally important areas. Thus urban regions face great land use changes, threats and management and co-operation needs to maintain ecosystem services. The sustainability of Finnish urban regions has been affected by both concentration of growth in only certain regions and increasing urban sprawl in the last 15–20 years. In Finland the population has become more concentrated in a few expanding urban regions, within which housing has sprawled to an ever wider area. Of 34 Finnish urban regions in 2000–2007, 22 had a growing population and 12 showed a decrease. The total area of residential districts increased by 66% between 1980 and 2008 because of growth in urban settlements and the increase in living space per person. The increase has been strongest in areas of single and terraced/detached house areas; these areas have seen a doubling in the land area used. From 1980 to 2005, areas of low-density single and terraced/detached house areas (e ¼ less than 0.02, where e ¼ the total area of buildings in relation to land area) have increased 40%. Furthermore, the distribution of housing types has changed. Whereas in 1980 half of the population of urban regions lived in blocks of flats, by 2005 this figure had decreased to 40% (ELYSE, 2010). Niemelä et al. (2010), based on earlier literature on ecosystem services, identified 16 ecosystem services in urban regions: . .

.

Provisioning services: (1) timber products; (2) food: game, berries, mushrooms; (3) fresh water, soil Regulating services: (4) regulation of microclimate at the street and city level; (5) gas cycles: O2 production, CO2 consumption; (6) carbon sequestration and storage; (7) habitat provision; (8) air pollution purification; (9) noise cushioning in built-up areas and by transportation channels; (10) rain water absorption: balancing of storm water peaks; (11) water infiltration; (12) pollination: maintaining floral populations and food production; (13) humus production and maintaining nutrient content. Cultural services: (14) recreation of urban-area-dwellers; (15) psycho-physical and social health benefits; (16) science education, research, and teaching

When dealing with land use choices resulting from constraints (threats) or opportunities (prerequisites) for goods and services — which are dependent on perceptions on what are considered as benefits — it is evident that relevant stakeholders should be involved in decision-making about land use and its patterns. 1250008-4

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In biodiversity and ecosystem services related to spatial planning these could be beneficiaries of the plan, people affected by the plan, general stakeholders including formal and informal institutions and future generations (Slootweg et al., 2006). Opdam et al. (2006) suggest that stakeholders should be involved in determining a feasible level of ambitiousness for diversity goals and in finding an appropriate (in respect of, for example, money and space) landscape design for it. Indicators can have an important role in this involvement. For ecological sustainability target-setting and assessment in a multi-actor environment, we found the conceptual sustainability choice space model developed by Potschin and Haines-Young (2006, 2007) useful as a general frame for development of ecosystem services criteria. The sustainability choice space consists of land-use configurations/planning choices that are perceived as sustainable. The boundaries of the space are defined by the combination of the biophysical limits of the ecosystems, which ecosystem goods and services they can provide and by the social and cultural values people attach to them. The stakeholder values determine both the (ambitiousness) level of the required service and goods outputs, on one hand, and the risks, costs and uncertainties people are prepared to accept for continued delivery of goods and services on the other (Potschin and HainesYoung, 2006). Outside the space, the capacity to supply goods and services is lost. These limits may vary in time because of improved scientific knowledge, changes in technology, changes in stakeholder values, changes in risks and uncertainties, costs and benefits. Likewise, the application of a precautionary principle affects the setting of the limits. Identification of the boundaries of this space involves both biophysical limits and stakeholder values. Quantitative or qualitative indicators can be used to demonstrate these boundaries and assess the consequences of different planning options. In order to make fully sustainable choices, a range of environmental/ecological, economic and social issues needs to be considered together for determining the limits of sustainability. Taking into account all three dimensions will usually narrow the space and increase the need to make trade-offs. This is illustrated in Fig. 2. Furthermore, in one pillar only, some issues may be exclusionary and trade-offs may be required. There are as many arguments for separating as for integrating the three pillars of sustainability in assessment (Morrison-Saunders and Therivel, 2006). One basis for treating the ecological pillar as separate is that human–social and economic activities must operate within ecological limits (Sadler, 1990). However, Gibson (2006a) points out that, even though humans are ultimately and unavoidably dependent on biospheric conditions, we play a huge role in manipulating those conditions and therefore all (socio-ecological) systems must be made to last. 1250008-5

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Fig. 2. Sustainability choice space with three-pillar indicators (modified from Potschin and Haines– Young, 2006).

Against integration is the well-grounded fear that integrated sustainability assessment may facilitate continued or even renewed neglect of traditionally undervalued considerations, especially ecological systems and functions (Gibson, 2006b). It has been argued, that too much integration between pillars can downplay environmental issues in strategic environmental assessment (MorrisonSaunders and Fischer, 2006). In addition, data usable in the production of indicator values follows the pillar-based criteria more easily than integrated criteria, which are usually rather difficult to transform into simple indicator values supported by available spatial or other statistical data. After consideration of these two alternative approaches, we opted to examine ecological considerations separately but simultaneously with two other pillars, also identifying indicators and spatial data that can serve two or more pillars. 1250008-6

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Development and Description of the Ecosystem Services Criteria for Urban Regions — Work Inside Research Teams and the Used Data Development of the initial criteria Our target was to develop a set of criteria and indicators which both state something about ecological sustainability and are attractive to practitioners in land use planning of urban regions. Because land use planning is intrinsically spatial and ecosystem services are spatially bound to ecosystems, the objective was to concentrate on criteria and indicators demonstrable by spatial data and analyses. The aim was to provide practitioners with an indicator framework using widely available spatial data (e.g. through existing, freely available, regularly updated databases) comparable between urban regions, and to provide guidance on how to produce the information but let the planning process operationalise sustainability principles and criteria by itself, producing the final information (maps, graphs, etc.) for each specific planning and decision-making situation. The usability of criteria and indicators was planned to be tested in real ongoing planning processes in some of the 34 Finnish urban regions. The criteria and indicator development process is described in Fig. 3. The first task was to develop the ecosystem services criteria in a multidisciplinary setting together with research teams developing simultaneously social and economic criteria. This consisted of workshops between twenty geographers, ecologists, social and environmental scientists and economists aiming to find more concrete, preferably quantitatively or qualitatively measurable characterisations of sustainability. As described above, the functionality of ecosystem services was taken as a starting point of ecological sustainability. In addition, ecosystem services research team (consisting of geographers, ecologists and GIS experts from the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, the Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Helsinki and the consultancy Sito) meetings were held to develop further initial criteria based partly on their scientific understanding of issues which they considered relevant, and partly on their knowledge of availability of data for calculating possible indicators describing the criteria. The initial criteria and indicators developed were based on the Finnish National Strategy on Sustainable Development and literature on ecosystem services, sustainability and best-practice principles of strategic environmental assessment (e.g., Bolund and Hunhammar, 1999; de Groot et al., 2002; IAIA, 2002; Pope et al., 2004; Kohti kestäviä valintoja, 2006; Fischer, 2007). Later expert interviews (e.g. on water cycle indicators) and a wide range of national and international literature on ecosystem related subjects was used in developing individual 1250008-7

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2009

Setting up ES research team

Integrating ES criteria with social and economic criteria teams

Draft ES criteria and initial indicators

Detailed development of ES indicators

Ongoing local master planning of a city: Lahti

SD Seminar for teams, regions, funders (June) => delimiting of criteria and indicators

1st mt (March): Presentation of ES criteria in Lahti 2nd mt (June): Indicator presentation

Comments - ranking indicators

Possible renewal of Oulu region joint local master plan: 10 municipalities 1st mt (February): Presentation of ES criteria in Oulu, discussion on planning situation

Comments - deleting unnecessary criteria

Versions of 3rd mt (September): 2nd mt (October): Indicator ES criteria Agreement on data presentation, agreement and delivery on data delivery, change of indicators boundaries based on ES literature Partial data deliveries Partial data deliveries and expert th 4 mt (December): Email exchange interviews, Presentation of indicator (November): Renewal of GIS analyses analyses planning unclear with national data More data deliveries 2010

2011

GIS analyses with regional data, further delimitation of ES criteria and indicators, moving indicators between SD pillars

SD Seminar to national, regional and local users (February): user experiences

Päijät-Häme region Monitoring of a final regional development programme: Päijät-Häme regional council Criteria and indicators to the council (September) The council selects 17 ES indicators to fit their own criteria

More data deliveries

5th mt (March): Discussions on use

Receiving indicator analyses electronically

6th mt (October): Need to analyse 9 indicators of 3 plan alternatives

Email exchange (October): merging of 4 municipalities => new planning situation – no need for plan renewal and indicator use

7th mt (November): basic data for IA

Impact assessment (IA) of alternatives: analyses (Dec-Jan)

Selection of pilots

Sending new version of indicators (October) Confirmation of usability (November)

Final comments on indicator analyses results from Lahti and Oulu

8th mt (February): presentation of impact analyses of alternatives

Fig. 3. Development and testing process of ecosystem services criteria and indicators. Abbreviations: mt ¼ meeting, ES ¼ ecosystem services, SD ¼ sustainable development.

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indicators (see Boxes 1–3.) From the beginning of 2008 to February 2011, criteria and indicators were developed at a total of 20 internal workshops and meetings of the ecosystem services research team and at 12 joint meetings and workshops with the social and economic research teams. The development of criteria was an iterative process involving the research teams, funders and users of the criteria and indicators. The sustainable development seminars held in 2009 and 2011 involved users from a wider interest group and they were attended by 25 and 60 people respectively. By June 2009, when the first seminar was held, the research teams had developed 22 (including 12 ecological) main criteria, 86 (including 47 ecological) second-order criteria, and 211 (including 110 ecological) indicators based on scientific literature, their own research interests, and concepts of regional sustainability. In February 2011, when the second seminar was held, the final criteria comprised 15(5) main criteria, 43(17) second-order criteria and 85(28) indicators. The reasons behind this delimitation of criteria and indicators are described in the section “Discussion of developing and testing experiences”. Of all indicators, over half represent more than one pillar criteria — e.g. they describe both ecosystem services and social or economic criteria. Uses of the two-level criteria and spatial indicators The main criteria gives substance to ecological sustainability of an urban region in the context of ecosystem services (Table 1). The main criteria concentrate on land use, green structure, recreation, the water cycle and the transport system. The second-order criteria concretise sustainability objectives in more detail and act as a link to indicators. The second-order criteria describe the present or target state of ecosystem service indicators against which one evaluates whether the criteria are met. When the second-order criteria are met — e.g. “community structure is consolidated” — the development of the urban region is considered to be ecologically sustainable. Finally, the indicator values specify what is considered by stakeholders to be a sufficient level of ambition for a certain issue/variable if one is to maintain a desired ecosystem service or keep the threats to ecosystem services at a desired level. The indicators are classified as main indicators (M) which provide sufficient information for most planning and assessment situations and completing indicators (C), which can be used as the context dictates and which can be used in certain situations when specific information is needed. Fourteen of the ecological indicators also represent social criteria. In Table 2 it is specified which ecosystem services the second-order criteria are assessing. Taking into account both data availability and complexity of ecosystem services, right from the start the criteria aimed to describe both functionality of ecosystem services and their prerequisites 1250008-9

T. H. Söderman et al. Table 1. Criteria and indicators for ecological sustainability/ecosystem services. The main criteria are I.-V. The second-order criteria are 1.-18. The indicators specifying criteria: . The main indicators (M) provide sufficient information for most planning and assessment . Complementary indicators (C) can be used as the context requires and when specific information is needed. I. The land use of the urban region supports maintenance of biodiversity and safeguarding of ecosystem services 1. Community structure is consolidated . Of all houses, the proportion built outside the local master plan area (M) . Placement of houses and workplaces in walking, cycling traffic, and public traffic zones (M) . Of all shopping centres with over 2,000 m 2 of floor area, the proportion that are within

walking, cycling, and public traffic distances (M) . Of all inhabitants of the urban region, the proportion living in areas with a population

density of over 20 inhabitants/hectare enabling public transport (M) . The proportion of sparsely built single-detached-house area (area density less than 0.02), of

all populated areas (M) . Of all families, the proportion with two cars and without any car (M) . Commuting trips per day and distance commuted per day in the urban region, proportion of

public transport, cycling and walking (C) . The proportion of people living in outlying villages and nearby villages, of all inhabitants of

sparsely populated areas (M) 2. Important natural areas are safeguarded . The proportion of protected areas, of all green areas (M)

3. There are carbon sinks in the urban region . The proportion of forests and mires in the urban region (C)

4. Culturally valuable areas are preserved . Culturally valuable sites (scenic areas, traditional farming areas, protected buildings, built

heritage, and relics) identified on all plan levels (C) II. The region hosts large natural non-fragmented nature areas and ecological connections 5. There are large uniform forest areas in the urban region . The proportion of large uniform forest areas (over 10,000 hectares) (M)

6. There are core nature areas in the urban region . The proportion of those forest areas with core areas of over 200 ha, excluding the 250 m

buffer zone of the whole forested area (M)

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Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions Table 1. (Continued ) 7. There are functional ecological connections in the urban region . Of all core nature areas, the proportion with several ecological connections (M)

8. Fragmentation is minimised . Of the forest area, the proportion of border zones of forest areas (C) . The proportion of forest areas larger than five hectares to all green and forested areas inside

the densely populated area (C) III. All inhabitants have opportunities for recreation in nature 9. Recreation areas are preserved . The proportion of land areas suitable for recreation (a) inside the densely built area and (b)

outside densely built areas, of the whole land area of the urban region (M) 10. Nearby recreation areas are accessible . The proportion of inhabitants living no more than 300 m from an area suitable for recreation

inside the densely built area (M) 11. Shores are available for recreation . The proportion of free shoreline (M)

12. Recreation does not threaten preservation of biodiversity . The ratio of inhabitants to the total area of areas suitable for recreation (C) IV. A functional water cycle enables use of water and a good living environment 13. Land use supports water cycle and carbon sequestration . The proportion of paved land (non-permeable surfaces) of the total land area (M)

14. Clean groundwater is not threatened . The proportion of groundwater areas classified as risky (M) . The proportion of paved land (non-permeable surfaces) of the total area of groundwater

areas (M) 15. Surface waters enable ecosystem services . Visibility and chlorophyll a in the water at certain measurement points (C) . The water quality of public swimming beaches (microbiological quality) (C)

V. The transport system does not endanger biodiversity 16. The traffic network does not prevent animal movements or cause fragmentation . Road density (M) . Area of roads in proportion to the number of inhabitants (C)

17. Traffic quantities do not threaten biodiversity . Traffic in proportion to the number of inhabitants (C)

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T. H. Söderman et al. Table 2. The second-order ecosystem services criteria and ecosystem services they are addressing. Ecosystem service types and their generating units are modified from Niemelä et al. (2010).

Second-order criteria Community structure is consolidated (1) –

Important natural areas are safeguarded (2) There are carbon sinks in the urban region (3) Culturally valuable areas are preserved (4)

Description, aim of criteria

Ecosystem services criteria is addressing

Service generating unit

Avoidance of threats to ecosystem services by urban land use change (urban sprawl) Protection of valuable nature areas Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change Potential to maintain human-nature interaction

All provisioning, regulating and cultural services

Biodiversity

Habitat provision

Biodiversity

Carbon sequestration and storage

Vegetation, especially trees

Science education, research and teaching, psychophysical and social health benefits Food: game, berries, mushrooms Timber products Gas cycles: O2 production, CO2 consumption Air pollution purification Humus production and maintaining nutrient content Habitat provision, other regulating services (e.g. micro-climate, pollination, noisecushioning) Habitat provision, other regulating services

Traditional landscapes, parks

There are large uniform forest areas in the urban region (5)

Maintenance of green infrastructure with large (>10 000 ha) forest areas

There are core nature areas in the urban region (6)

Prevention of disturbance of species, maintenance of regulating services

There are functional ecological connections in the urban region (7) Fragmentation is minimised (8)

Maintenance of, connections between core areas (e.g. species movements) Prevention of fragmentation

Habitat provision, other regulating services

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Different species in land ecosystems Different tree species Forests Vegetation Soil micro-organisms, litter, invertebrates

Vegetation, insects, birds, mammals Thick/wide forest

Vegetation, insects, birds, mammals Thick/wide forest Vegetation, insects, birds, mammals Thick/wide forest

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions Table 2. (Continued )

Second-order criteria

Description, aim of criteria

Recreation areas are preserved (9)

Ensuring large (>1.5 ha) recreation areas

Nearby recreation areas are accessible (10)

Ensuring recreation for all population groups

The shores are available for recreation (11)

Prevention of building pressure on shores

Recreation does not threaten preservation of biodiversity (12) Land use supports water cycle and carbon sequestration (13) Clean ground water is not threatened (14)

Monitoring the pressure of recreational use of urban nature

Surface waters enable ecosystem services (15) The traffic network does not prevent animal movement or cause fragmentation (16) Traffic quantities do not threaten biodiversity (17)

Water cycle maintenance and climate change mitigation and adaptation Avoiding risky activity in groundwater areas, ensuring good quality drinking water Ensuring good quality surface drinking and swimming water Avoidance of threats to regulating ecosystem services by increased transport

Ecosystem services criteria is addressing

Service generating unit

Recreation of urban dwellers, psychophysical and social health benefits Recreation of urban dwellers, psychophysical and social health benefits Recreation of urban dwellers, psychophysical and social health benefits Cultural services

Parks, forests and water ecosystems

Water infiltration Rainwater absorption, balancing storm water peaks Fresh water

Wetlands, vegetation cover, soil

Fresh water

Water ecosystems

Habitat provision, other regulating services

Vegetation, insects, birds, mammals Thick/wide forest

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Parks, forests and water ecosystems Water ecosystems

Parks, forests and water ecosystems

Groundwater infiltration, suspension and storage

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(main criteria groups II, II and IV) and threats to ecosystem services (focusing in built-up areas, urban land use and transport system, main criteria groups I and V). Thus the aim was not just the description of ecosystem services but the whole problem framing in the maintenance of ecosystem services as presented in Fig. 1. In this way all ecosystem services of urban regions are addressed (Niemelä et al., 2010). The criteria was designed to be used for strategic decision-making and impact assessment in a mid-sized urban region, which in the Finnish context means regions of 80,000 to 200,000 inhabitants, including, for example, land-use planning (regional and local master plans), traffic system plans, development plans, and various sectoral plans. The criteria enable discussion among stakeholders regarding questions such as: (i) Which services and sustainability goals are prioritised and why (target-setting)? (ii) How will indicator values change with certain scenarios and alternatives (scenario working and comparison of planning options)? (iii) Have strategic objectives been reached, or is the development headed in the desired direction (monitoring)? The criteria are applicable in a number of EIAs as well, especially in large projects that may significantly affect the community or green structure of the region — e.g. large harbour projects. The criteria will be published in 2011 in a Finnish guidance book describing how to use the criteria, how to calculate indicator values, and where to get the data. In the book, first the content of an indicator and what it tells about ecological sustainability and ecosystem services are explained. Any existing threshold/limit values or recommendations are also described — the size required of an urban forest patch for avoiding edge effects inside the forest or the minimum size of a recreational nature area, etc. Then, scientific and other references on which the indicator and possible limit values are based are listed. Next, the data sources are described. The spatial level at which the indicator is applicable is indicated — e.g. whether it is suitable for the whole urban region or only the densely populated parts of it. Then, a map illustrating indicator values is presented as an example. Finally, data gaps and facts depending on the data sources and how they should be treated or interpreted are described. Boxes 1, 2, and 3 present three indicators as examples — the proportion of land areas suitable for recreation (an indicator for criterion 9), the proportion of inhabitants living no more than 300 metres from an area suitable for recreation (an indicator for criterion 11), and the proportion of forests and mires functioning as carbon sinks (an indicator for criterion 3). 1250008-14

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Utilising spatial data In the selection of indicators, one main starting point was the availability of data. The objective was to utilise as much as possible the existing spatial information in the monitoring system of spatial structure (MSSS) (SYKE, 2009), which is a GIS-based database and planning toolkit developed by the Finnish environmental administration. The system offers, for example, register-based two-way commuting data for the whole of Finland for five-year periods, starting in 1985. The database has a spatial resolution of 250 × 250 metres for the whole country (Helminen and Ristimäki, 2007). It offers geographically precise information about the spatial structure and its changes. The MSSS offers possibilities for monitoring land use and the built and non-built environment, gives tools for land-use planning at all scales, and provides GIS tools for estimating the long-term effects of change in the urban environment on nature areas. Other data sources were CORINE Land Cover data (OIVA, 2010); the national building and apartment register; and data from Statistics Finland, the road administration, and other government institutes. The land cover of Finland has been mapped as part of the European CORINE2000 Land Cover project (EEA, 2009). The Finnish Environment Institute SYKE has been responsible for the data production in Finland. A satellite image map and a raster land cover database with 25×25 metre resolution covering the whole of Finland has been produced. This database has been generalised so as to fit in with the European land cover map with a minimum mapping unit of 25 hectares. The Finnish version (25 × 25 m) is, however, far more suitable for analysis alongside other available data, especially in a varying or detailed environment, such as densely built-up areas. The differences in resolution and classification of these two databases are demonstrated in Fig. 4. Many of these data sources include long-term series from the 1980s, in order to offer temporal examination of indicators. The emphasis was on spatial data because the aim was to use data on urban functional regions in their real-life context with inter-municipal planning problems independently from municipal and other administrative boundaries, and localised data on maps for effective stakeholder involvement. The data was presented both on maps and as ratios or percentages to enable comparison between urban regions.

Testing of the Ecosystem Services Criteria in Urban Regions — Work with Regional Project Groups Selection of pilots At the beginning of the sustainability criteria development, the research teams contacted five middle-sized urban regions of which two, Lahti and Oulu, showed 1250008-15

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Fig. 4. Example of differences in the European land cover database (CLC2000), with 25-hectare (minimum) polygon size (left), compared with the more detailed Finnish version of the same data, with 25 × 25 m resolution (right). The map on the right is far more detailed (e.g. roads and small parks) and has more classes (e.g. different types of vegetation and canopy). The black grid represents inhabited YKR squares 250 × 250 m in size. These squares are the basis for the delineation of various zones in this study, so they are also the basis for analyses. Therefore, this grid provides a starting point as to a satisfactory level of accuracy and resolution for the data used.

interest in testing and had both either ongoing or nascent regional planning processes which might offer good testing possibilities for criteria. The city of Lahti forms the centre of the Lahti urban region and is Finland’s seventh largest city. Lahti occupies a central location for logistics, in the centre of Southern Finland. The city of Oulu is in the northern part of Finland and is the sixth largest city in the country. 1250008-16

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In the Lahti urban region, the interest was expressed by the Lahti region environmental service, an administrative office responsible for the environmental protection of three municipalities: the city of Lahti and two neighbouring municipalities. The Lahti region environmental service was just preparing its climate programme for 2009–2015 and the City of Lahti was starting to prepare the local master plan for the target year 2025. It became apparent that the testing possibilities of the initial criteria and indicators appeared to be better in the local master planning process than in the climate programme preparation as the climate programme preparation process was almost completed. It was decided to keep the programme under consideration but to concentrate mainly on the local master planning. Nevertheless, the local master planning process of a single city did not offer a real regional planning approach, but it was regarded as advantageous to use regional criteria and indicators in the planning of a single city due to land use challenges such as urban sprawl and the fragmentation of ecosystems that defy administrative boundaries. Thus a “bigger picture” was needed. In the Oulu urban region the interest was expressed by regional and municipal planners of the City of Oulu, who had been involved in the preparation of the joint local master plan in 2002–2003 with a target year of 2020, including seven municipalities surrounding the city of Oulu. The interest was based on the intention to start the renewal of the existing plan. The area of the plan was expanded to cover an additional three municipalities. The planning schedule of the Lahti local master plan was that in 2009 the planning would consist of target setting and preparation of the participation and assessment scheme, in 2010 of baseline studies and drafting plan alternatives and their impact assessment for internal use inside the city administration, in 2011 of preparing the final plan proposal and its impact assessment, and in 2012 of approval of the plan. This follows the typical local master planning process described in more detail by Söderman and Saarela (2010). The planning schedule for the renewal of the joint local master plan for the Oulu region was open when it was chosen as a pilot, but renewal of the plan was expected to begin in 2010–2011. Methodology for defining urban regions To ensure comparability of criteria and indicators between urban regions, the methodology to delineate an urban region suitable for demonstrating ecosystem services was created. The urban regions were delineated via methodology in which three area types are distinguished: central urban areas, neighbouring densely populated areas, and a buffer zone. A central urban area, defined as an area with over 15,000 inhabitants, fulfils the criteria for MSSS densely built-up areas. The 1250008-17

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MSSS method for delineation of densely built-up areas follows the principles of the Nordic standard for densely built-up areas: the buildings are a maximum distance of 200 metres from each other and there are at least 200 inhabitants in the area. However, the MSSS method operates with 250 metre grid data and also takes into account the gross floor area of buildings, and the outcome is more compact than the one produced by using the Nordic standard. The MSSS method is tuned to indicate the development and extent of a densely built-up area, while the Nordic definition is geared to showing the population concentrations. Neighbouring densely built-up areas belonging to an urban region consist of areas whose distance from the border of the central urban area is less than 3 km. The area also belongs to the urban area if the distance between the borders is more than 3 km, at least 20% of the population commute to the central urban area, between this area and the central urban area there are more than 45 buildings within a one-kilometre radius, and the border of the neighbouring area is less than 40 km direct distance from the centre of the central urban area. In addition, there must be a road connection between the central urban area and the neighbouring area, and the distance from the border of the neighbouring area to the border of the next neighbouring area must be less than 8 km (or it must be less than 6 km from the border of the central urban area). A neighbouring area can be part of only one urban region. Together the central urban areas and neighbouring areas fulfilling the requirements mentioned are regarded as a narrow urban region. For testing criteria, a buffer of 10 or 15 km from the border of the areas of the narrow urban area, depending on the specific criteria, was added, because this was regarded as the area producing the most ecosystem services for the urban region. This area is called a wide urban region. Originally the ecosystem services research team set out to delineate ecologically functional regions which would be compatible with functional urban regions based on built-up areas. Several experiments with forested areas, recreational areas, national parks and watershed areas were carried out but they resulted in impracticable delineations comprising too large, too small or artificial non-ecological boundaries. Eventually mere distance zones of 10 and 15 kilometres were chosen based on the average maximum distance of use of cultural ecosystem services (Pouta and Heikkilä, 1998). The Lahti wide urban region with 15km buffer zone has 172,705 inhabitants (2007), and the land area is 2,889 km2. The population of the narrow urban region is 125,947. The Oulu wide urban region with 15 km buffer zone has 216,090 inhabitants (2007), and the land area is 2,934 km2. The population of the narrow urban region is 181,485. The pilot regions’ locations are presented in Fig. 5. The criteria and indicators were meant to be tested in two phases. The first phase in the pilot testing comprised final criteria and indicator formulation, data 1250008-18

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

Fig. 5. The pilot regions. (a) Finland, (b) 34 Finnish urban regions, (c) Oulu urban region, (d) Lahti urban region.

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collection and indicator calculation. The second phase was meant to involve practical collaborative use of the indicators produced in planning processes. The regional project groups were set in two urban regions and research agreements were signed between the research teams and regional project groups, in which the researchers committed to perform the calculation of indicator values based on national data and regional data and give the results for the use of the mentioned planning processes. The regional project groups committed to provide regional data for the analyses of the indicators. Testing in the Lahti urban region The Lahti project group consisted of seven officials from the Lahti region environmental service, and from the City of Lahti involved in municipal land use, mapping and city research. The group held eight meetings in total with the researchers throughout the project in Lahti (Fig. 3). At the first meeting, the ecosystem services main and second-order criteria lists were presented and discussed. Comments concerned the ambiguity of the criteria. Because the criteria were merely qualitative the Lahti project group felt they were very open to interpretation and difficult to use as such. At the second meeting indicator lists were presented. The research team had attempted to concretise the criteria as a measurable “proportion of something of something in the region”, e.g. “the proportion of non-permeable surfaces of total land area” or “the amount of free shoreline for recreation as a proportion of the total amount of shoreline”. Thus the indicators would describe relative amounts of service or pressure of service, not just how much “there is of something”. This was welcomed by the regional project team by stating that in municipal decision-making there is always a need to compare the planning situation with other similar/competing areas but usually no data for that. After the meeting the Lahti project group ranked the present indicators, including 33 ecosystem service indicators, based on the usability of indicators in the climate programme and local master planning. They found nine indicators to be relevant to the climate programme, 32 indicators to be extremely relevant and one indicator quite relevant in local master planning. By the fourth meeting it was clear that not all data to produce results of indicator analyses could be found from national databases and a list of regional data needed was given to the Lahti project group. The data requests concerned noiseless and culturally valuable areas (indicator for criterion 4), silent areas with less than 45 dB and 35 dB (indicator designed for abandoned criterion “there are noiseless and silent areas in the urban region” under main criteria I), outdoor recreation areas (indicator designed for abandoned criterion “outdoor recreation areas are accessible” 1250008-20

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under main criteria III), surface water quality (indicators for criterion 15), location and area on land extraction sites (indicator designed for criterion 14), and traffic quantities (indicator for criterion 17). Data deliveries were expected to be finalised by the end of 2009, but still a considerable amount of data corrections and additions were received during 2010 and final indicators analyses were only completed by the second half of 2010. Part of the data was received but some indicators had to be changed to correspond to the availability of data and some had to be abandoned altogether because the data turned out to be non-existent, nonspatial (i.e. without any coordinates or reliable maps to digitise), or was not collected exhaustively from Lahti municipality, not to mention the surrounding smaller municipalities. Because the indicators were calculated from the whole urban region defined by the methodology, the indicators for which data was not available for the region had to be discarded. When the final indicators had been selected and calculated on a regional level, the Lahti project group asked for a separate additional analysis of the area of Lahti city concerning nine indicators, of which seven were ecological: two indicators for criterion 1, the indicators for criteria 2, 9, 10, and 12 and two social indicators concerning the accessibility of schools and retail services and noise areas. The project group had selected these indicators to be the most important in assessing the impact of the three alternatives of the local master plan: an alternative consisting of fine-tuning of the present urban structure (0þ), an alternative based on the consolidation of areas of blocks of flats in the centre of Lahti (I) and an alternative based on the development of dense single and terraced/detached house areas around the centre (II). The Lahti project group provided the population forecasts and a formula for calculating maximum population densities in these new development areas in each alternative. The values of indictors were calculated for each plan alternative and they were proportional to the land area or population of the city of Lahti, not the urban region as during the indicator development work. The analyses were performed by the research team and the data was collected by the Lahti project group. It is notable that it took two months for one person to carry out the analyses for three plan alternatives of nine indicators. The results, including the absolute numbers and proportional values (e.g. number and proportion of people living no more than 300 metres from an area suitable for recreation), and the maps indicating where these people and areas were located, were presented to the Lahti project group and other representatives of Lahti municipality involved in the local master planning. Eventually the schedule of local master planning did not enable participatory target setting or the evaluation of ambition levels for each indicator between wide ranges of stakeholders. The target setting of the plan had already been done when 1250008-21

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the indicators were in such a concrete state that it would have been possible to use them in target setting at the beginning of 2009. In 2010, phases of local master planning were more or less internal and wide stakeholder participation was not being realised before the selection of the final plan proposal in 2011. Thus the research project fell between the participative planning phases. However, some results showing how the determination of desired levels to the required ecosystem services or control their threats would work were received in the testing process. At meetings, participants of the Lahti project group commented that the proportional indicator values were too low, too high or started discussion on the need for actions concerning particular ecosystem services or their threats. One example was a discussion following the presentation of maps and calculated proportional values of indicators describing green structure, in which one participant stated that one of the priorities must be the preservation of wide uniform forest areas because forests are already so fragmented. Parallel discussions were observed in the second sustainable development seminar after presentations of indicator analyses. Testing in the Oulu urban region The Oulu project group consisted of five members, representing two municipalities, a joint planning body for all 10 municipalities, the regional centre for economic development, transport and the environment (ELY centre) and a planning consultant. Only two direct meetings were held between the researchers and the Oulu project group and but contacts were maintained by e-mail. This was due partly to the longer distance between the researchers and people from the Oulu region and partly to less interest in collaboration by the Oulu project group. At the beginning of the project there were no planning processes that had been officially started, and during the project it was politically decided that four of the ten municipalities of the Oulu region were to be administratively merged to form one big city from the beginning of 2013 and thus there was no need and consequently no immediate use for the produced indicator analyses concerning the ten municipalities. The process ran parallel to the Lahti testing process except that the Oulu project group commented on the present second-order criteria list of 24 criteria by deleting six criteria they considered as impractical for region level planning. At the second meeting the representatives of the surrounding municipalities felt that that the delineation of the wide urban region did not fit their needs since it did not include the whole municipality of Hailuoto, an island off the coast that is important for recreation. Thus the left arm was added to the delineation of the wide urban region (see e.g. Fig. 8). In addition, the project group requested that 1250008-22

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analyses should be carried out for the area covering ten municipalities of the local master plan area in addition to the wide urban region (see e.g. Fig. 11 and Box 3). The Oulu group did not rank the present indicators after the second meeting as there were no internal needs to consider the indicators in detail because at the time it appeared that the local master planning process would not be started soon. Nevertheless, the group sent the requested data to the researchers. The municipal data of the Oulu region included gaps and inconsistencies of similar types to those of the Lahti region. After the final indicator analyses were completed, both the Lahti and Oulu project groups sent their detailed comments on the results to the researchers. The Oulu project group considered the indicators as relevant, although they regarded that some of them were on a too general level to be used merely without additional indicators (e.g. a protected areas indicator for criterion 2) and also called for predetermined threshold values for many indicators. Testing in Päijät-Häme The Päijät-Häme regional council wanted to provide an extra pilot case after the third meeting in Lahti, where it turned out that the regional council, which is a provincial level coalition of municipalities responsible for regional planning, was finalising its regional development programme for the target year 2035 and was in need of indicators. The programme defines future strategic development goals of the region and is spatially realised via a regional land use plan. The researchers contacted the council and were informed that it was eager to test the indicators because it had developed its own criteria for a responsible region to monitor the success of the programme’s objectives concerning (a) challenges and pressures for change and (b) goal-oriented trends, which the region tries to achieve. The latter greatly resembled the second-order criteria. The main and second-order criteria and indicator lists were sent to the council. The council independently chose 11 ecological indicators and 21 social and economic indicators. The chosen ecological indicators fit their challenges of climate change, urban sprawl, and quality of living/segregation of living areas, safeguarding the basic services for inhabitants, damages to the clean nature and decreasing travelling needs. They included six indicators for criterion 1, indicators for criteria 3, 5, 1, 13 and the indicator for the abandoned criterion “outdoor recreation areas are accessible” under main criteria III. The researchers did not calculate any indicator values for the council, but the testing merely included the selection of suitable indicators. The council felt that the indicators were very useful regardless of the fact that the second-order criteria somewhat differed from their goal-oriented trends. The council will produce a monitoring report of the regional development programme in 2012 to 1250008-23

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measure how well their goals have been realised. Then the planners of the council will calculate the indicator values by themselves. Examples of indicator analyses In the pilot phase, the indicator values of the Lahti and Oulu regions were calculated and data searches were performed by the researchers developing the criteria and indicators. In testing, most data was from one year, but in a real planning situation, it is possible to use data for a period of, for example, five years, covering most of the MSSS from 1980 and two time series for CORINE LC data including 2000 and 2006. It is intended that the planners of the urban regions produce the data themselves for planning situations by applying the guidelines and data in the MSSS and other data sources. Below, three chosen indicators are described via map results and tables presenting numerical data. The first set of two analysis maps (Figs. 6 and 7) describes an indicator specifying criterion 9 (Box 1) for the Lahti urban region. The grey area is classified as suitable for recreation. Each area meeting this qualification must be at least 1.5 hectares in size and belong to the land-use classes listed in Box 1. The second set of two maps (Figs. 8 and 9) describes an indicator specifying criterion 10 (Box 2) for the Oulu urban region. The same data has been used here as in the previous analyses but is combined with population data. Thus the perspective provided for examination is different, describing the accessibility of those areas suitable for recreation. The white areas inside the densely built areas represent areas with more than 300 metres’ distance to the nearest area suitable for recreation. The centre of the city of Oulu is one of those areas. The third set of maps (Figs. 10, 11 and 12) for analysis describes an indicator specifying criterion 3 (Box 3) comparing the proportion of forests and mires functioning as carbon sinks of the Lahti and Oulu city regions. As carbon sequestration is a regional or even higher-level issue spatially, the analysis was performed only at the city region level.

Discussion of Developing and Testing Experiences Concretisation of ecological sustainability in regional context Table 3 summarises our findings on developing and testing the ecosystem services criteria. The table shows what was originally intended and what was/can be achieved in practice. Any criteria for sustainability must be detailed enough to be applicable in practical planning. Therefore, the practical way to concretise very broad concepts of sustainability, or ecological sustainability as one pillar thereof, is to use two 1250008-24

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Example of analysis: The national Corine Land Cover 2000 database is relatively well suited to examination of the areas suitable for recreation in wide urban regions. The full datasets for the areas examined were retrieved from the CLC2000 database (25 m raster) to a GIS application. The CLC2000 raster datasets were then transformed into vector datasets and cut with the outer boundaries of the largest area of analysis. In the case of Lahti, the largest cropping was the 15-kilometre-distance zone of the narrow urban region. For Oulu, in addition to that zone, the area of analysis was extended to cover the whole land area of Oulu and surrounding municipalities. From the CLC2000 vector datasets, cropped with the outer boundaries of analysis areas, land cover classes presumably suitable for recreation were extracted. These classes were green urban areas (CLC class 1410), sports and leisure facilities (1422), forests, open

Description: According to the recommendations of the environmental guidebook of the Finnish Ministry of Environment (Pouta and Heikkilä, 1998), the minimum size for a local green area suitable for recreation (e.g., a local park) is 1.5 ha. Recreation areas of this size can be placed in the proximity of residential areas in land-use planning. However, also green areas smaller than this can be very important, particularly in urban environments (Tyrväinen et al., 2007; Nordh et al., 2009), especially if connected to outdoor recreation routes or to other recreation areas. The aim is that both local parks and outdoor recreation parks (of size 20–25 ha, max. 1 km from residential areas) be accessed via light traffic routes, without need for a private car. With this indicator, the proportion (%) of land areas (ha) suitable for recreation is calculated in relation to the total land area (ha) of a wide urban region. The indicator gives a sense of the existence and preservation of recreation areas both in densely populated areas of wide urban regions and in areas outside those densely populated areas, serving as guidance for ensuring that as many inhabitants as possible have opportunities for outdoor recreation in nature. The higher the proportion is, the better the chances for outdoor nature recreation in (a) densely populated areas of wide urban regions and (b) areas outside those densely populated areas.

Box 1. The proportion of land areas suitable for recreation

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

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Lahti (ha) Lahti (%)

Oulu (ha) Oulu (%)

Wide urban region

7,333 29.0 10-km zone 5,080 29.9

10 municipalities 7,844 32.1 15-km zone 5,495 29.5

15-km zone

In densely populated areas

381,503 85.8 10-km zone 128,953 69.2

10 municipalities

227,496 79.4 15-km zone 186,190 68.9

15-km zone

Outside densely populated areas

Example of results: Table: Areas (ha) and proportions (%) of land areas suitable for recreation, of the total land area of wide urban regions of Oulu and Lahti in different distance zones in densely populated areas and areas outside densely populated areas

sparsely vegetated areas, and bare rocks (all of the level-3 classes existing in Finland), inland marshes (4111), open mires (4121), and salt marshes (4211). Residential areas and agricultural fields were not counted as areas suitable for recreation, although residential areas can be significant since green environments and field landscapes can be aesthetically very recreational and have potential for use for recreation during winter (e.g., cross-country skiing). However, because it is forbidden to access and use fields during the growing season, they cannot be counted as areas suitable for recreation all year round. Finally, a contiguous polygon dataset of areas suitable for recreation was formed from the extracted CLC2000 classes and the proportions were calculated. According to recommendations (Pouta and Heikkilä, 1998), polygons under 1.5 ha were deleted from the dataset.

Box 1. (Continued)

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Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

Fig. 6. Land areas suitable for recreation in the Lahti region, including the narrow and 15-kilometre buffer zone.

levels of criteria and then give them meaning by means of indicators. This worked well, and a clear link between individual data, lacking inherent meaning on their own, and ecological sustainability was found between (1) researchers, (2) researchers and urban planners, and (3) inside regional project groups. Links between biodiversity and its spatial configurations, for example, in the form of large forest areas, ecological connections and core nature areas, and ecosystem services provided by them, became more concrete when included in the criteria 1250008-27

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Fig. 7. Land areas suitable for recreation in the Lahti region within the narrow urban region.

and indicators examining ecological sustainability as a whole. The criteria also contributed to concretise the very strategic level of national land use objectives set according to the land use and building legislation (Land Use and Building Act, 1999). Comparability between regions was realised to a certain extent. The suitable delineation methodology was found to enable comparisons between urban regions but this was hampered by requests from the Oulu region to change the boundaries. The concept of urban regions was challenging to the regional project groups. The concept of a narrow urban region developed by the researchers functioned well when planning processes followed administrative boundaries. In the Oulu region in particular, many indicators had to be produced twice, first with functional boundaries and secondly within the 10 municipalities in the planning 1250008-28

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Example of analysis: The first part of the analysis was performed identically to the analysis in Box 1. After deletion of polygons under 1.5 ha from the dataset, the following additional procedures were performed: A 300 m buffer zone was formed for each polygon, and these zones were merged in cases of overlap. Inhabitants outside the buffer zones live more than 300 m from the nearest land area suitable for recreation. Then, in the Lahti case, grid-based population data from 2005 for the 15 km zone were retrieved from the monitoring system for spatial structure. Grid-based population data were then cut out on the basis of the boundary data for densely populated areas. And this was further cut out by the 10 km distance zone. At this point, grid-based population data for densely populated areas in two different distance zones were available. The population count for densely populated areas was checked from the attribute table of each zone with a statistics tool and written down (a population count for narrow urban regions is already calculated in the attribute table of the

Description: In this indicator, the proportion (%) of inhabitants of a wide urban region living max. 300 m from an area suitable for recreation is calculated. In several studies, the maximum 300-metre distance or maximum 5–10-minute walk from home to a green area has been observed as a critical threshold value, after which the recreational use of a green area clearly decreases (e.g., Schipperijn et al., 2010). This distance has therefore been used as a guideline for the location of local parks in the Planning and Management of Green Areas guidebook of the Finnish Ministry of the Environment (Pouta and Heikkilä, 1998). The proximity of green areas is exceptionally important for children, who, according to Wiik (2005), still at primary-school level play at a max. 300 m radius from home. Moreover, the proportion of elderly people is growing, and so is the significance of local recreation areas for outdoor recreation and in elderly people’s health maintenance. The accessibility of green areas is generally good in Finland, and the aim should be that the situation would at least not deteriorate from what it was in the late 1990s.

Box 2: The percentage of inhabitants living no more than 300 m from an area suitable for recreation

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Narrow urban region 10-km zone 15-km zone

Lahti

125,167 149,970 150,522

133,457 139,754

Population count in densely populated areas

118,553

Population count in 300 m buffer zone in densely populated areas

93.7 93.4

94.7

Proportion (%) of inhabitants under 300 m from an area suitable for recreation in densely populated areas

6.3 6.6

5.3

Proportion (%) of inhabitants living over 300 m from an area suitable for recreation in densely populated areas

Example of results: Table: The proportion (%) of inhabitants of the densely populated areas in the Lahti urban region living no more than 300 metres from an area suitable for recreation

dataset). From the grid-based population data for densely populated areas in different distance zones, areas where inhabitants are no more than 300 metres from the nearest area suitable for recreation were cut out with 300 m buffer data. Population counts for these areas too were checked from the attribute table with a statistics tool and written down. Finally, the percentage of people living further away than 300 m from the nearest area suitable for recreation was calculated for densely populated areas in both distance zones.

Box 2. (Continued)

T. H. Söderman et al.

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

Fig. 8. Inhabitants who live less than 300 metres from areas suitable for recreation in the Oulu region, including the narrow urban region and 15-kilometre distance zone.

area for the Oulu region’s local master plan. However, if the indicator values are based not on functional regions but on administrative ones, comparability between urban regions is lost. Integration of ecological, social and economic criteria proved to be challenging due to data availability. Most of the indicators in the social pillar remained 1250008-31

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Fig. 9. Inhabitants living less than 300 metres from areas suitable for recreation inside the narrow urban region.

qualitative and would have required very participatory processes where the stakeholders would have had to provide the data for example in the form of interviews, and the planning processes did not offer opportunities for that. Most economic data was not available in 250×250 metre grids, but rather only at a municipal level. Thus comparisons at a regional level within the wide urban region were hampered. In principal the qualitative second-order criteria were regarded as good by the regional project groups but they encountered difficulties with indicators in terms of concepts, concerning for example what is an area suitable for recreation: could gardens of terraced/detached houses be considered recreational areas, how about empty spaces between blocks of flats, etc.? On the block level this perceived quality of the environment can be quite important from the aspect of cultural ecosystem services. Furthermore, individual gardens can offer important regulating 1250008-32

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Example of analysis: The beginning of the analysis was performed identically to the analysis in Box 1, but this time the following CLC2000 classes were extracted from the CLC2000 vector datasets to the final dataset: forests (CLC classes 311–313) and open mires (CLC class 4121). The level-4 classes in the CLC2000 database had to be used in extraction of the open mires, so that peat production areas (4122), whose inclusion in the analysis was not desired,

Description: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is, because of its amount, the most important gas increasing the greenhouse effect. In Finland, CO2 is sequestered and stored especially in forest trees and soil, because of which retaining forest cover and increasing forest biomass have a strong significance in mitigating climate change (Seppälä et al., 2009). In mires, CO2 is stored in peat layers (Sarkkola, 2008). In urban regions, carbon sinks can be examined on macro and micro scales. Here, the macro scale means large forest and mire areas, whereas the micro scale concentrates on the carbon balance within compact urban areas. Urban parks and tree plantings can in some cases function as carbon sinks (McHale et al., 2007), and correctly planted trees can decrease the energy consumption of nearby buildings by providing shade (less need for cooling) and wind cover (less need for heating) (McPherson and Simpson, 2003). Although the carbon sinks of cities are unlikely to have a significant impact on the global carbon balance, urban green areas have potential to mitigate the effects of climate change in urban areas (Gill et al., 2007). This indicator calculates the proportion (%) of the combined area of forests and mires (ha) from the total land area (ha) of a wide urban region. The higher the proportion is, the more carbon sequestration potential there is in the wide urban region. The indicator does not include agricultural fields, which can be significant in carbon sequestration in some cases. Moreover, the indicator does not address the peat layer thickness and the density and biomass of forest cover, except that areas with canopy layer coverage of under 30% are not included in the analysis. These absences are due to issues of database availability; while the proportion of fields could be calculated, a separate and complex interpretation would be required.

Box 3: The proportion of forests and mires in the urban region

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Lahti Narrow urban region (Monitoring System of Spatial Structure) Narrow urban region and 10-km zone

Oulu Oulu and the nine surrounding municipalities Narrow urban region (Monitoring System of Spatial Structure) Narrow urban region and 10-km zone Narrow urban region and 15-km zone 2,304 96,558

203,346

108,403 154,348

216,070 293,360 12,986

304,401 3,348

Forests and open mires (ha)

469,749 21,088

Land in area unit (ha)

47.5

17.7

50.2 52.6

64.8 15.9

Forests and open mires (%)

Example of results: Table. Areas (ha) and proportion of forests and mires in wide urban regions of Oulu and Lahti.

could be separated out. The proportions of forest and open mire surface areas within the selected area units were then calculated. The following area units were examined: (1) the combined area of Oulu and nine surrounding municipalities, (2) a narrow urban region cropping from the Monitoring System of Spatial Structure, (3) a narrow urban region and the surrounding 10-kilometre zone, and (4) a narrow urban region and its surrounding 15-kilometre zone. In the Lahti case, only the last three of these area units were examined.

Box 3. (Continued) T. H. Söderman et al.

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions

Fig. 10. The proportion of forest and mires functioning as carbon sinks in the Lahti region, including the narrow urban region and 15-kilometre buffer zone.

services (Colding, 2007). However, the ecosystem services criteria was designed for urban region level planning purposes and it was regarded both as impractical and unnecessary to measure the actual or perceived quality of small areas because it would have taken resources in the form of detailed 1250008-35

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Fig. 11. The proportion of forest and mires functioning as carbon sinks in the Oulu region, including the narrow urban region and 15-kilometre buffer zone.

ecological studies or interviews which are not usually available in real-life practical planning situations. Therefore, the ecosystem services research team defined certain CORINE CL land use types as suitable for recreation because it was considered to give a quantitative overview that was detailed enough for planning at 1250008-36

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Fig. 12. A close-up of forests and mires inside the narrow urban region.

an urban region level (see Box 1). At a more detailed planning level or with considerable planning resources to collect experience-based data, soft GIS methods are available to measure the perceived quality of individual areas (Rantanen and Kahila, 2009). 1250008-37

T. H. Söderman et al. Table 3. Findings of developing and testing of ecosystem services criteria. Intended

Achieved

Reasons

Concretisation of ecologically sustainable development

Succeeded well: 5 main criteria, 17 secondorder criteria describing sustainability and 28 indicators Succeeded partly: well on criteria lever; to lesser extent on indicator level

Linking ecological sustainability to more understandable concepts of ecosystems services and biodiversity and factors affecting them (threats and prerequisites described by indicators)

Integration of SD pillars

Developing consistent concept of a urban region suitable for comparing ecological sustainability and ecosystem services throughout the country

Succeeded partly: original idea of functional ecological regions was abandoned and replaced with distance zones, deviations from distance zones hampered the comparability

Collecting comparable spatial information on urban regions, finding practical use of national spatial databases

Succeeded well in almost all criteria groups

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Intensive collaboration of ecological, social and economic research teams in developing joint concepts on SD, data availability on social indicators was mainly qualitative, on economic indicators mainly at administrative municipality level–comparability of indicators was hampered Methodology of central and neighbouring urban areas based on human activity is comparable in all urban regions; several delineations taking into account wide forested areas, recreational areas and national parks in certain distance zone were explored to form an ecological regional but resulted in impracticable delineations and thus merely distance zones were used. Deviations from these were made at the request of a regional project group. Availability of consistent national databases and CORINE Land Cover data enabled the analysis of most indicators – existing data was more or less “fit for use” with minor changes to originally planned indicators. Accessibility, quantity, quality and comparability of local authorities’ data (especially from other than the central municipality) constrained analyses of some indicators – some indicators had to be abandoned. Some data was available only on points (water quality), not across large areas and thus presentable only as diagrams.

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions Table 3. (Continued ) Intended

Achieved

Reasons

Using both qualitative and quantitative ecosystem service indicators

Succeeded on quantitative level but not on qualitative level

Use of long time series, analysing trends

Not succeeded, only provision of baseline data of current situation was possible

Wide use of criteria and indicators in pilot planning processes

Succeeded partly: impact assessment of plan alternatives of Lahti municipality – use, some use in PäijätHäme Regional Council, minor use in Oulu urban region; simultaneous development and use was challenging

Joint development of criteria and indicators

Two-way interaction in development succeeded

The services are value-based and depend on social and cultural values. Measuring exclusively qualitative indicators would need surveys of stakeholder perceptions in specific planning situation – it was considered too difficult to develop generally-applicable value-based indicators without testing. Present planning processes of pilot regions eventually failed to enable detailed testing in form of surveys in project timeframe (time and resource constraints). Most ES indicators required land use data: availability of national version of CORINE Land Cover data on the time analyses was restricted to the year 2000. Analyses were much more resource intensive for researchers than expected due to data conversions, quality improvement tasks, additional data needs from regions and delayed data deliveries (resource and time constraints). Lack of long time or partial time series of national and municipal ES linked data. Integration of real-world planning processes and research and development was challenging: time and institutional constraints – Lahti local master planning process was not able to use the indicators until the end of the project (final indicators were not ready for use, indicators kept changing based on availability of data, entry points for indicators/researches did not appear in planning). Political situation changed in Oulu region during the development work – decreased interest. Appearance of non-planned testing interest in PäijätHäme was positive. Initial criteria and indicators were commented on by Lahti and Oulu region project groups — intelligibility of ES

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Achieved

Reasons

between researchers and urban regions

well – potential use was tested better than actual use (above)

Setting threshold levels to indicators (determining significance criteria)

Not succeeded, even though much requested by regions: “what is a good amount of each indicator?”

research concepts was successfully challenged – resulted in changes of criteria and learning by researchers and regional project groups on ES; the revealed poor data availability, comparability and resource constraints of municipalities informed indicator development resulting in the choice of the most usable ones, not the most ambitious ones. Usability was appreciated in the final seminar by users. Non-existence of criteria and thresholds provided by guidance or scientific ES literature (apart from noise-levels and some recommendations of the Ministry of the Environment regarding cultural ES), regions are biophysically, socially and economically different – it was not possible to set threshold levels applicable in all planning situations, recommendations must be set nationally based on results on all urban regions or in each planning situation by stakeholders, not by external experts.

Data challenges Data availability restricted the free choice of criteria and indicators. Most of the second-level criteria and indicators which would have needed municipal data had to be abandoned. The data availability and capacity to deliver it from the regions was poor. This concerned indicators under criteria 1 (commuting travel), 2, 15, and 17. When data was available, formats still differed between the Lahti and Oulu regions, and regions had to send several datasets, in different formats, several times before the data was comparable. For several indicators, the final comparable datasets were never sent. One of those second-level criteria and indicators was recreation areas of 100–200 hectares. Some of the municipalities had this information and some did not. The usual reason for non-existence of comparable regional data was that the data was collected using different methods in each 1250008-40

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municipality of the region or the data was available only from the central and biggest municipality and not the smaller ones with lesser resources for environmental data management. Furthermore, the data collection methods varied or were not known. This was the case with the noiseless areas. Some municipalities had commissioned studies of these areas from consultants, but the used methodologies could not be traced from the reports. In addition, the agreements committing to deliver the data were made with the project groups and not with all municipalities inside the wide urban region. Thus the motivation to send data from municipalities which did not have a representative in the regional project group was low. Although the data was available and convertible to another format, the busy officials were not able to involve themselves in data management. This will be all the more true when the regions produce the actual indicators themselves. In addition, it is important that criteria and indicator descriptions, as well as instructions for calculating indicator values and the data that should be used, are detailed enough. These instructions were produced during testing but were not available when data was requested, and unclear data requests confused the regions’ personnel. The intention to calculate long time series of indicators was constrained by the availability of resources. A considerable amount of data quality improvement tasks, data conversions and new calculations had to be carried out which took much more time than anticipated. The production of indicators turned out to be more complicated than was expected. Advanced GIS expertise was needed. Partly this was caused by the fact that it was not clear what data would be suitable, with development of an indicator being conducted in parallel with its testing, but still it appeared that the indicator values should be more easily producible. They should be directly available as standard analyses in the MSSS. The planners’ needs are usually immediate, and if the data is not readily available, it are not acquired and therefore not used. This demonstrates that all data should be available from central national databases. Opportunities for participatory approaches Wide participatory use of indicators during the four year project did not succeed. The integration of planning cycles and the development and testing of criteria proved to be challenging. During the development work, the planning processes were expected to be available both for pilot testing that formulated final criteria and indicators, data collection, and indicator calculation and for second-phase testing with collaborative use of indicators. First, it was extremely difficult to time the development work suit the real-life planning processes. In Lahti, the research 1250008-41

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project fell between the participatory planning phases and in the Oulu region, the political situation meant that the data that was tailored to fit the planning process of ten municipalities was in the end not interesting as the user needs had changed. Secondly, the planning processes were rather closed and it was difficult for researches to step in. Several requests to the regional project groups were made by researchers to attend internal meetings where planning processes were discussed, without success. The researchers were welcomed to present their results at the project group meetings but a tangible interface between research and practice was not fully achieved. The closest collaboration involved the impact assessment of the three local master plan alternatives in the latter part of the project, when the indicators were final. It is also notable that the real demand for analyses appeared when they were made for one interested and committed municipality within definite administrative boundaries. Even though the problems with urban sprawl and ecosystem fragmentation would require inter-municipal cooperation, the present planning system appears to deal with them preferably inside the borders of individual municipalities because the administrative structures that would comply with the land use challenges of urban regions do not exist. Albeit the collaboration in real on-going planning processes was only partial, the collaboration with the development of criteria and indicators succeeded well. The project groups provided valuable comments. Including data acquisition from urban regions in the development work eliminated the unrealistic expectations on what can be achieved and what cannot in real land use planning process. Involvement in the development work also motivated the use of the indicators in real planning processes and the indicators were experienced to be both interesting and relevant. For example, in the internal impact assessment of the three local master plan alternatives, the Lahti project group attempted to use the matrix-based assessment techniques most popular in strategic assessment (Therivel, 2004) and distributed assessment matrices to the officials involved but nobody was eventually interested enough to complete the matrix. However, GIS-based assessment methodology raised significant interest and the results of analyses were widely used within the municipal administration. Besides problems with data acquisition, the seminars and regional project group meetings efficiently delimited the criteria and indicators which were difficult to understand or overlapping. Without the involvement of pilot regions and user seminars it would not have been possible to develop the criteria and indicators to satisfy user needs. User experiences from all three pilots presented in the final seminar would suggest that the simplicity and user-friendliness had been achieved. 1250008-42

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Obviously, more experiences from the users who actually perform the whole criteria and indicator exercise by themselves without external help will be the ultimate test of the usability of the criteria and indicators.

Conclusions and Recommendations The ecosystem services criteria combine conceptualisation and concretisation of ecologically sustainable development. A concrete basis for measurement, valuation and assessment of ecological sustainability was created by developing twolevel criteria for ecosystem services, which were linked to spatial and statistical data. The concept of ecosystem services and ecological sustainability became clear in pilot regions participating in development of the criteria: testing in urban regions made it possible to experiment with the suitability of data in indicator formulation. This testing was a prerequisite for the development of criteria that can be utilised in practical planning and should be an integral part of any development of planning tools designed for use by municipalities and other planning actors. Data availability and inconsistency affected the choice of indicators. In future this problem will be eased with national data improvement projects which aim to standardise data collection and storage at a municipal and national level and will especially increase data availability through data interfaces. For example, the SADe Programme for eServices and eAdministration in 2011–2013 consists of the construction of information and analysis services for the built environment, including ecosystem services-related data (SADe, 2011). Before these kind of large-scale data interfaces enabling spatial and statistical data use from many different sources are functional, it appears that national level databases (MSSS or other nationally available data) are the most usable in ecosystem services analysis of urban regions, especially when comparing urban regions. The testing of ecosystem services criteria concentrated on the formulation of criteria and indicators, and practical utility remained low, despite ongoing planning processes. Therefore, it was impossible to determine the objectives and limits of sustainability in the collaborative planning situation. There is a need for further testing in ongoing planning processes. The criteria and indicators should be used from the start of the planning process and they should be used by all stakeholders, planners and decision-makers in the whole region to create discussion on what is desirable development (e.g. what should be the proportion of sparsely-built single and terraced/detached house areas or the proportion of large uniform forest areas). The baseline maps and indicator values should be used as a starting point to the discussion. Furthermore, all indicator maps 1250008-43

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can be layered, enabling a very simple but illustrative demonstration of land use choices. The desired threshold levels should be set jointly and after that an attempt to find the land use configurations which would result in the desired indicator values. Alternatively, the calculation of values and the preparation of maps of several land use alternatives could be used to select the best option, as took place in Lahti. After the selection of the final plan alternative, monitoring should use the baseline or the target indicator values as reference values. Because most of the data for the final indicators is available on 250 × 250 meter grid, the spatial unit can vary from municipal to urban region or provincial scale. The stakeholder selection should vary according to the scale. In any case, the setting of the desired threshold values cannot be a technical exercise performed by external researchers or consultants because the setting of thresholds or targets for each ecosystem services indicator is a value-based decision-making choice. Research on how this can be actually realised in practice in urban regions is needed. For researchers and practitioners aiming at attempting to concretise ecological sustainability for land use planning and impact assessment we made several recommendations. They are: . . .

.

.

.

.

Define ecological sustainability through ecosystem services — people become interested in concrete benefits rather than ecological facts Use two-order criteria and indicators to dismantle difficult concepts of sustainability and ecosystem services into comprehensible pieces Use very simple indicators, the calculation of which is easily understandable so that participation and target-setting is not hampered by complicated indexes or models If you cannot track data to describe the state or use of an ecosystem service, indicators of the built-up environment can be used to describe “good” or “bad” development for availability of ecosystem services Use existing widely available national data as a starting point in choosing the indicators to (a) preserve comparability (b) avoid wasting time and money in developing individual indicators that are impossible to use in practice Prefer spatial data — in land use planning, taking into account ecosystem services and their generating units (where and what), the spatial data is relevant When using municipal data, give very clear instructions on what data is needed and how it will be used (e.g. in what coordinate system, conversions from MapInfo to ArcView), agree on final data delivery deadlines and ensure commitment to data delivery from each administrative unit 1250008-44

Ecosystem Services Criteria for Sustainable Development in Urban Regions . . . . . .

.

.

.

Develop/use a suitably wide selection of indicators from which appropriate indicators can be picked to suit planning needs and data availability Develop and use criteria and indicators simultaneously to achieve the most operational selection Fit the development work together with the practical planning schedule when possible Use criteria as a check-list to ensure that all angles of ecosystem services have been considered — criteria and indicators can be also used separately Develop/examine ecological sustainability parallel to social and economic criteria and indicators to identify trade-offs Use spatial data (also layered) when presenting results as much as possible — planners prefer the use of maps to statistics, stakeholders comprehend the planning problems via maps better than long lists of statistics Use functional boundaries suitable for the planning situation, prerequisites and threats of ecosystem services and remember the administrative reality — if the results are not fit for use they are not used Use indicators as planning aids to further discussion and decision-making, not as absolute truth — they tell something concrete about ecological sustainability but planning situations are case and region-specific Remember region-specific features when comparing regions or other areas

The ecosystem services criteria and indicators for the Finnish context are now ready for use in the other 32 urban regions, and their use should be promoted through examples from the Lahti and Oulu regions and guidance material produced during development and testing. The resources that can be used to consider sustainability systematically in practical planning are very scarce, and sometimes skills in presenting indicator data in a clear and appealing form (e.g. in maps) are lacking. Therefore, the criteria and indicators developed should be included as standard analyses in the Monitoring System of Spatial Structure so that they will be readily and easily available for all 34 urban regions in Finland.

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