The supply of ecosystem services at the urban scale: Evidence from the Cagliari urban functional area

Evidence from the Cagliari urban functional area

Abstract

This study proposes a methodology for defining an urban green infrastructure (UGI) in the spatial contexts of functional urban areas (FUAs) identified by the OECD and the European Commission in 2012. The methodology refers to UGIs as systems that integrate the characteristics of green infrastructures, as spatial networks of natural and semi-natural areas that provide a wide range of ecosystem services, and the properties of urban infrastructures, as devices that respond to the needs and expectations that, in different respects, are expressed by communities settled in cities (Geneletti et al., 2021). UGI is identified, in the context of a FUA, as a succession of green areas, spatially connected to each other, which contribute to the provision of certain ecosystem services. This infrastructure includes the connecting elements that are identified as urban ecological corridors. The methodology, which supports the spatial taxonomy of the UGI on the classification of the FUA territory proposed by JRC in relation to enhancing the resilience of urban ecosystems through UGIs, is applied to the FUA of Cagliari, located in the regional island context of Sardinia, with reference to the provision of some ecosystem services such as climate regulation, flood risk mitigation, outdoor recreation, and biodiversity and habitat quality enhancement (Isola et al., 2022). The application of the methodology, which supports the spatial taxonomy of the UGI on the land classification of the FUA proposed by JRC (Maes et al., 2019), offers significant results in relation to enhancing the resilience of urban ecosystems through conservation and increasing the availability of ESs structured in the UGI (Breuste, 2021). The study is implemented with reference to the spatial context of the Cagliari FUA, in the regional island setting of Sardinia, of which Cagliari is the regional capital city. The discussion highlights how the outcomes referring to the Cagliari FUA offer relevant urban planning implications for other FUAs, including in terms of future research developments (Zulian et al., 2021).