Chapter V. Multifunctionality of Greenbelt on Urban Scale
5.4 Multifunctionality in Planning Efforts
5.4.2 Greenbelt planning process
The Greenbelt concept has been brewing for decades and revised by several scholars before the Greenbelt Constitution got fully approved by the City Council. Thanks to the international workshops during the Greenbelt Project Year, the contemporary new concepts of urban green space planning from different countries and districts were exchanged together. The acknowledgement of “sustainable
In this way, the Greenbelt Plan at the beginning had already targeted on different aspects, which were described as ecological, social and aesthetic goals. It is not an outdated plan even for today.
The implementation process had been more intricate due to its two working forms, the GmbH and Project Group. The coding process here focused rather on the actual works done and made analysis based on official records, than on the complicated process and management. In the implementation for two decades, especially during the Project Group since 1997, the goals of Greenbelt Plan were disassembled and carried out slowly by numerous projects. The coding here marked if an ES was ever targeted in any project instead of the frequency. Same analysis was made for the plan “Spike and Ray”
in 2012 by the working group led by Professor Dr. Friedrich von Borries. This plan is a pilot part of the 2030 planning strategy and could also be seen as an “add-on” plan on the old Greenbelt plan. Besides, the report on the current situation of Greenbelt was also studied within the same framework. Though this report was not a plan, it was a relatively objective assessment made by scholars outside the Greenbelt and carried with abundant information. Table 5.4.1 shows the result of detailed content analysis of which ES were considered in Greenbelt Frankfurt in the four chosen phases.
Overall among the 25 analyzed ES items, four of them (16%) were clear targeted in all three phases from 1991 to 2012, namely “local climate regulation” (R2), “recreation/ ecotourism” (C2a),
“Health” (C2b) and “cultural heritage” (C4a). Three ES (12%) were never clearly targeted and all of them belong to regulating services. The “moderation of extreme events / flood” (R4) and “Biological control” (R9) were considered of low relevance and they are mostly local and limited problems; the
“pollination” (R8) is of medium importance but could always be benefited by other purposes. There is no totally forgotten ES in the analysis, which reflects the necessity of preliminary selection of ES based on studied area.
Considering from the four categories of ES, the habitat functions and cultural services have received full attention in the planning and implementation; the efforts on previsioning services is decreasing and regulating services in all time depends more on co-benefits from other purposes. The reasons are diverse. Biodiversity has been a political and academic topic since 1980s especially in European context and greatly affected the later term multifunctionality (Jones-Walters 2008). However, a majority political attention is paid to climate mitigation and adaptation nowadays. This helps to explain the fact that “Habitat for species” (H1) and “Maintenances of genetic diversity” (H2) was no longer the top priority in the 2012 new plan, despite the fact the attention and funding are never enough; and climate related ES, R2 and R3 which are climate adaptation and mitigation respectively, were the few targeted regulating services, though they already performed beyond average. Most other regulating services are much less mentioned. “Water purification and waste treatment” (R6) and “Erosion prevention and maintenance of soil fertility” (R7) were once vital in the fear of environmental crisis in 1980s, but no longer top agenda in the new plan. “Noise regulation” (R10) emerged as a new urban problem only in
Provisioning services, due to the agricultural tradition in Frankfurt, generally received fair attention and assessment. Half of these ES were explicitly targeted at the beginning and most of them were implemented by projects. But non was included in the new plan 2012 despite the general high relevance. Cultural services were from the beginning the top targets and still caught the planners’ eyes in new plan since the Greenbelt was made “for the people” from the beginning (Paul 2000), while the citizens and surveys didn’t have all positive feedback.
Besides the listed ES, the Report 2011 also pointed out other notable situations. For instance, social equity or socio-environmental justice was indistinctly mentioned in the 1991 Plan that the Greenbelt should be a place formed by all kinds of life styles, a place where all citizens could participate.
It was an advanced topic at that time but too vague to achieve through physical open space. The necessity of using public open space as communication area for all people only got attention in recent studies in other districts (Kabisch and Haase 2014). The report identified the crowd differentiation in the use of Greenbelt that elder people and families are the main groups while not enough younger people take Greenbelt as a first choice, although there are many collage students gathered in Frankfurt. Considering the high migration rate in Frankfurt, this differentiation may bring problems in the future.
Table 5.4. 1 Consideration of ES in different plans and report of Greenbelt Frankfurt No. Service/Function Greenbelt
Plan 1991 Implementation
1992-2011 New Plan
2012 Report
2011 Relevance
P1a Food/crop ● ○ ○ High
P1b Food/wild - ● ○ - High
P2 Raw materials/
Timber & Fuel ○ ● - ▲ Medium
P3 Fresh water ● ● - ▲ Medium
P6 Ornamental
resources ● ● ○ - Low
R1 Air quality
regulation ● ○ ○ ▲ High
R2 Local climate
regulation ● ● ● ▲ High
R3 Carbon
sequestration and
storage ○ ○ ● - High
R4 Moderation of
extreme events/
Flood ○ ○ - - Low
R5 Water regulation ○ ● ○ - Low
R6 Water purification
and waste treatment ● ● - - Medium
R7 Erosion prevention and maintenance of
soil fertility ● ● - - Low
R8 Pollination ○ ○ ○ - Medium
R9 Biological control - ○ - - Low
R10 Noise regulation - ○ ● High
H1 Habitat for species ● ● ○ High
H2 maintenance of ● ● ○ ▲ High
No. Service/Function Greenbelt
Plan 1991 Implementation
1992-2011 New Plan
2012 Report
2011 Relevance
C1a Aesthetic values ○ ● ○ High
C1b Inspiration - ● ● - High
C2a Recreation/
ecotourism ● ● ● High
C2b Health ● ● ● ▲ High
C4a Scientific research - ● ○ - High
C4b Educational value ○ ● ● ▲ High
C5a Cultural heritage ● ● ● ▲ Medium
C5b Cultural diversity ● ○ ● Medium
In total 13● 7○ 17● 8○ 9● 10○ 8▲ 6
In first, second and third column, ● represents for a clear target and ○ refers to a potential benefit in the analysed documents. In the fourth column, ▲ states for the satisfaction in reports and means the problematic or most complained topics, the undiscussed topics are marked with -.
General trend of cohesion and changes through the stages could be clearly seen from the Fig.5.4.1.
Both Plan 1991 and Implementation have emphasis the Habitat Functions. In documents it was formulated as “to protect rare and endangered types” and to promote “diversity of habitat and biologic”.
The 1991 Plan had already addressed half the ES in the framework and the attention paid in Provisioning, Regulating and Cultural services were similar. The Implementation exceeded the original goals and covers all topics, especially on Provisioning services had a great increase, but the majority of Regulating functions were still targeted in an indirect way. However, the New Plan in 2012 show limited consideration other than cultural ones. Its emphasis on mostly response to the global discussion of urban climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as the local demand of a greener urban image setting.
The new plan tried to be a turning point of the development in Greenbelt, from the infill process to the out-connecting approach. The name of the new plan “Spokes and Rays” could also help to objective this transition. However, based on the multifunctionality framework, the former infill process still need more works.
Furthermore, each line of the Table 5.4.1 shows how each ES has been understood by different group of people in different time, the planners/designers, the researchers and the experts, which are three aspects of the questions. Take “food/crop” (P1a) and “food/wild” (P1b) for instance, the Greenbelt plan 1991 valued the farmlands inside Greenbelt and wanted the place to be “a dialogue between the city and agriculture” and to “supply Frankfurt with fresh local farm products”(Stadt Frankfurt am Main 2003).
For the experts of Greenbelt, the importance didn’t change even for now, as it was still identified as high relevance (interview Bönsel). However, few has been done for the topic by manager/officer of the project. The clear target for P1b came from the apple picking garden project like “Main Apple House”
in Lohrberg, whose success mainly rely on non-profit associations rather than Greenbelt project. The concern of P1a in the 2011 report was mainly about the 5% low rate of ecological cultivation (Projektbüro 2010), which showed no difference as agriculture out of this natural protection area. But
the hands of the project group are tied due to private landownership and low special funding for larger moves. It is then reasonable that the new plan no longer focused on the provisioning services.
Fig.5.4. 1 The consideration of the four types of services and functions, namely Provisioning (P), Regulating (R), Cultural services (C) and Habitat functions (H), in the Greenbelt plan 1991, the Implementation 1992-2011 and New Plan 2012, draw by author.
Though the report 2011 didn’t initially targeted on every ES, its results reveal some further problems together with other columns. First of all, all evaluated items were also identified as either high or medium relevance, which shows the consistency between practices and researchers. All the satisfied functions are included, at least mentioned, in the Greenbelt Plan 1991, and all are explicitly implemented in specific projects. However, explicit target is not a sufficient condition. Among the six dissatisfied ones, R10 is the only dissatisfied ES that was not payed enough attention before, while all others have been explicitly targeted. The “aesthetic values” (C1a), “recreation/ecotourism” (C2a) and “cultural diversity” (C5b) received almost full attention all the time but considered not good enough according to questionnaires on citizens (Projektbüro 2010). Similar situation happens between H1 and H2, that with the seemingly same performance on the plan and implementation, H1 was considered less satisfied by experts. According to the report, though the biodiversity level in Greenbelt is quite high from across the country, many typical regional forms of landscape, as well as traditional habitats, are losing. The targets in plan and projects means higher priorities and more opportunities, but not necessarily high quality in the long time run.
More clues are hidden under these contradictory results and pointed out the fact that the enough attention on urban planning level is vital but not sufficient. There could be some potential explanations of the phenomenon. For example, comparing with P1, the fine condition of P2 (raw materials/ timber &
fuel) may greatly rely on the centralized management of the Department of Urban Forestry and the city owned forest land. It maximized the capacity of managers and researchers and avoided many divarication from the beginning, like the chasing of profit and maintenance of ecological properties. The
“education value” (C3b) is not an initial target of Greenbelt, but it captured the rising trend and possibilities and acted creatively. In a word, the coding based on the unified framework provide a new lens for interpretation, which helps to understand the relationship between planning and reality.