Urban ecological infrastructure (UEI) generates ecosystem services in cities. Because so many people live in cities, it is essential for UEI and associated ecosystem services to persist in order to ensure desirable futures. Scenario planning is one tool that can be used to envision alternative futures and pathways to get there. Positive future visioning can support urban planning processes and decision-making that build resilience to climate events, such as floods, extreme heat, and droughts. We ask, how do cities differ in the degree to which they incorporate UEI and ecosystem services into their future scenarios? To answer this, we analyzed strategies developed during nine participatory scenario workshops conducted by the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network. The nine cities we studied were: Baltimore, Maryland; Hermosillo, Mexico; Miami, Florida; New York, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Portland, Oregon; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Syracuse, New York; and Valdivia, Chile. We extracted UEI strategies and explicitly mentioned ecosystem services in those strategies from scenarios across the nine cities. We made comparisons among the city visions, seeking to understand similarities and differences in strategies related to UEI and ecosystem services based on scenario themes and various social, ecological, and technological factors in each city.
Results/Conclusions
Preliminary results show that regulating ecosystem services were the most frequently mentioned in scenario strategies, followed (in order) by cultural, provisioning, and supporting services. Scenarios focused on extreme weather had 27% more UEI strategies and mentioned more regulating services than scenarios without an extreme weather focus. Scenarios focused on themes like equity and connectedness, rather than extreme weather, mentioned cultural services more frequently. As expected, agricultural UEI strategies had more provisioning services mentioned than any other UEI type (p<0.001) and bioretention UEI strategies had more regulating services mentioned than most other UEI strategies (p< 0.05). Natural ecosystem UEI features had more cultural services mentioned than cultivated tree UEI strategies (p<0.05). There were no patterns for supporting services. Social factors played a role in how scenarios unfolded. For example, we found a negative relationship between the number of cultural ecosystem services mentioned in UEI strategies and median household income of the scenario city (p=0.02, R2=0.22). Our results illustrate desired ecosystem services from UEI when planning for positive futures, while also underscoring the importance of understanding the context under which local stakeholders are operating and how that context may influence their visions.