How Do Different Modes of Governance Support Ecosystem Services/Disservices in Small-Scale Urban Green Infrastructure? A Systematic Review

Abstract

As cities are facing environmental and societal challenges, including climate change, rapid urbanization, and the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars and policymakers have recognized the potential of small-scale urban green infrastructures (UGI), such as rain gardens and street trees, to support important ecosystem services (ES) during periods of crisis and change. While there has been considerable research on the design, planning, engineering, and ecology of small-scale UGI, the governance modes of such spaces to support ES and manage ecosystem disservices (EDS) have received significantly less research attention. In this article, we provide a systematic review to evaluate how different modes of governance support different ES in small-scale green infrastructure. We evaluated governance in six types of small-scale green infrastructure: small parks, community gardens, vacant lands, rain gardens, green roofs, and street trees. Our review examines the different characteristics of four new governance approaches, including adaptive, network, mosaic, and transformative to understand their bottom-up nature and applicability in governing ES/disservices of small-scale UGI. Each governance mode can be effective for managing the ES of certain small-scale UGI, given their associations with principles such as resilience thinking, connectivity, and active citizenship. Our synthesis highlights knowledge gaps at the intersection between governance arrangements and ES in small-scale UGI. We conclude with a call for further research on the environmental and contextual factors that moderate the linkages between governance modes and ES/EDS in different types of UGI.