People-Policy-Options-Scale (PPOS) Framework: Reconceptualising Green Infrastructure Planning

Abstract

As most developing countries continue to expand, they are required to employ more sustainable practices to ensure urban resilience is achieved. Green infrastructure (GI) is being increasingly discussed as a mechanism that can deliver social, economic and ecological benefits within and across cities to meet this challenge. However, across both developed and developing countries the influence of economic and political actors through legislation and investment practices could be considered to distort the development process leading to uneven and inequitable access to amenities and public green space. Such pressures lead to economically focussed master planning, which lack an understanding of ecological systems and the role of human–environmental interactions. By reconceptualising landscape and environmental planning using a novel People-Policy-Options-Scale (PPOS) framework, we argue that investment in GI can effectively address socio-economic and ecological issues simultaneously within politicised discussions of environmental management. Each aspect of the proposed framework is grounded in an understanding of planning and community development enabling it to draw on scalar, thematic and temporal aspects to sustainable development.