Designing urban green spaces for climate adaptation: A critical review of research outputs
Marisa Graça, Sara Santos Cruz, Ana Monteiro, Tina‐Simone Neset
Abstract
Urban green spaces provide important contributions to enhance climate adaptation, and therefore research in this area has increased exponentially in the last decades. While several studies showed that the morphology and type of living and built elements of urban green spaces greatly affect their performance, a persistent gap between theory and practice continues to pervade the design of green spaces. This study conducts a semi-systematic review of research published in the last decade to investigate to what extent recent research has produced evidence-based outputs relevant to practitioners concerning the design of outdoor urban green spaces in the context of climate adaptation. An innovative design-oriented approach is subsequently applied to critically review evidence-based research outputs considering a comprehensive spectrum of climate impacts and adaptation measures. Our specific objectives are to: i) identify evidence-based research outputs of relevance to practitioners according to type of climatic impact; ii) assess the level of relevance and geographical transferability of such outputs to support the design of urban green spaces; and iii) identify key challenges that might hinder the implementation of evidence-based guidelines. Our results support a call to align research to confront the ‘wicked’ gap between scientific research and implementation in design practice.