Greenways and the Urban form: City of Ankara, Turkey

What Is the Effect of Cultural Greenway Projects in High-Density Urban Municipalities? Assessing the Public Living Desire near the Cultural Greenway in Central Beijing

Cultural greenway projects (CGPs) are widely regarded as an urban planning approach which connects open green spaces and sites of sociocultural value to provide access to living, working and recreational spaces and enhance local social well-being. This paper examines the impact of such CGPs on public living desire before and after a given project is completed through analyzing housing prices in the surrounding area. We deployed a hedonic pricing model (HPM) and differences in differences (DID) model to analyze and record any changes in housing market trends that may have been caused by such a cultural greenway project. Via analysis of single-family home sale transactions in central Beijing from 2013 to 2017, we found substantial evidence that proximity to a cultural greenway project is positively linked with rising property prices. Once complete, CGPs were similarly associated with positive increases per HPM and DID modeling. Our results revealed that the distance to greenway contributed significantly positive impact on the housing market after the cultural greenway project completed. Moreover, our result indicated that once a CGP was open to the public, it increased the price of properties within 1 km by 13.3%. Seller and buyer expectations of the development of local, green public infrastructure also began to factor into housing prices prior to the greenway opening to the public. Post-completion, the positive trend in property pricing due to local CGPs indicates that the public still have an increasing desire to live near the greenway. These results will help policymakers better understand how cultural greenways affect neighborhoods in high-density urban contexts, and will support the development of urban greenway policies for cities in China that reap the maximum economic benefit.

A Systematic Comparison of Cultural and Ecological Landscape Corridors in Europe

Landscape corridors are narrow strips of land that differ from the matrix on either side. In addition to providing connectivity between fragmented landscapes, these corridors serve scenic, cultural, social, ecological, and recreational purposes. We systematically reviewed reports and studies related to 92 cultural and ecological landscape corridors in Europe, focusing, in particular, on their planning and management, problems addressed, approaches and tools used, stakeholders involved and spatial scales. Biodiversity conservation was found to be the most frequently stated aim (67% of the cases), followed by recreation and tourism (62%). The planning processes for cultural and ecological landscape corridors were dominated by similar, quite narrow, stakeholder groups, but via a wide variety of approaches and tools. Ecological corridors existed at larger and more variable scales relative to cultural landscape corridors. Significant differences were found in many aspects of the two types of corridors, although a complete separation of the two categories was difficult since most of the cases reviewed were designed to serve multiple aims. We close the paper by making a few recommendations for decision makers concerning future corridor planning.

Selected persistent organic pollutants levels in the Ankara River by months

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are banned in almost all countries due to their adverse health effects while they are still present in the environment due to their persistence. As the dissipation and the emission factors of POPs change by temperature and other environmental factors current study aimed to determine selected POPs, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in water and sediment samples collected from 12 stations located in Ankara River, Turkey, for 12 months. C-18 solid-phase extraction technique was used to extract organic pollutants and the analysis were performed using a validated gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method. DDE was the most frequently detected contaminant in water samples. Even though no PCB residues were present in water samples, PCB101 was the most common contaminant in sediment. Although both matrices had the least load of pollutants in winter, there was an increase in presence and concentration of pollutants from late spring to autumn.