URBAN GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE ENHANCING BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN SMART CITIES

Background: Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) is critical to increasing biodiversity and climate resilience in smart cities. Through their rapid urbanization, there is a turning point to optimize the ecosystem services in which a better solving framework is to combine UGI with smart technologies to enhance sustainable urbanization. Nonetheless, the success of integrations relies on social and economic aspects and governing systems. Goals: The paper dwells on whether UGI can help in promoting climate resiliency and biodiversity. It is also investigated which socioeconomic status and governance act as moderators of the link between UGI, smart technologies, as well as climate adaptation. Methods: The study measures the difference of UGI on climate resilience (0.323) as well as social-economic status (0.393) using quantitative analysis. The efficiency of smart technologies in the management of UGI is evaluated, paying attention to the aspect of governance as a possible moderation factor. Results: Results show that UGI contributes immensely to the climate resilience and the socioeconomic well-being. Nevertheless, the mediating position of policy and governance on effectiveness of smart technologies is not proven. The socioeconomic statuses precondition the reception of UGI gain by collective communities. Conclusion: Planning of the UGI strategy to reduce the effects of the toxic sprawl, along with good governance and meaningful urban planning, are key to the utmost resilience and sustainability. A potential direction of future studies is a more in depth focus on governance mechanisms and an explicit moderation test.