Green Towns and Cities - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 123

growth boundaries around a zone containing the built-up area and provision for
a 20 year supply of land, to prevent future sprawl. An elected seven person Land
Conservation and Development Commission reviews the plans, with disputes be-
ing dealt with by a Land Use Board of Appeals. This strong direction from above,
and a democratic mandate from regional elections from below, has provided a rare
example of a comprehensive system of regional planning in the U.S.A. (Stephenson
1999 ). It has not been without opposition, for there have been several propositions
on state elections to get rid of these bodies, which have been defeated with help
from the Friends of Oregon lobbying group. Since the early 1970s, Portland, in
particular, has emerged as an exemplar of the utility of such growth control and
infill policies, helped by the addition of an elected Portland Metro council covering
surrounding municipalities that is responsible for several regional-wide functions.
Some of these ideas have been adopted by other American jurisdictions, although
most are still plagued by a localism in planning. Yet the obvious need for planning
around big cities to produce co-ordination and co-operation between neighbouring
municipalities in the location of such features as new urban developments, water
supply provision, recreation areas and transportation routes has led to the growth of
what is called New Regionalism (Scott 2006 ) , an issue reviewed in Chap. 2, which
produces solutions,
not through top-down regional government, but through incremental development of
social capital, institutions, ad hoc partnerships and frameworks of incentives and mandates
between existing levels of government. (Wheeler 2002 , p. 267)

4﻽4 Green Infrastructure

Until recently, the approaches to the greening of towns and cities have been rather
piecemeal, in the sense that different agencies, both public and private were re-
sponsible for the different types of green developments found in these jurisdictions,
while there are huge differences between places in the amount of green coverage.
Increasingly, however, urban governments have started to review the whole pattern
of green as well as open areas in their jurisdictions to provide a more comprehen-
sive view of its various parts. This more holistic approach has led to the term 'green
infrastructure' being applied to the disparate green and open space elements within
municipalities and their surroundings, a term popularized by a recent report by the
European Environmental Agency (EEA 2011a ). A summary of the potential assets
making up the green infrastructure is shown in Table 4.1 , although the various ele-
ments have been re-ordered from the original source to make the connections at
different scales more obvious.
Although the EEA report noted that no widely accepted definition of the term
green infrastructure exists, it does not use the term simply as a summary for the
inventory of green areas. Rather it was proposed that the term was a
concept addressing the connectivity of ecosystems, their protection and the provision of
ecosystem services, while also addressing mitigation and adaptation to climate change…
helping to ensure the sustainable provision of ecosystem goods while increasing the