Abstract

The present paper reports on how green qualities as well as characteristics for well-being and of environmental concern have been handled in a development project north of Malmö in southern Sweden. The outdoor environment is an important attraction for dwellings, companies, employees and their customers. Research on environmental perception has increased our knowledge of how environmental qualities, e.g. green areas, affect people’s well-being. The distance from green areas to your home can largely explain your well-being. Eight characteristics can be seen as resources for housing, recreation, tourism and establishment of business parks. They can be handled as quality criteria. Authorities can require a certain level of these qualities, and demand that developers use compensation measures to mitigate negative impacts, renovate impaired resources, or replace qualities and recreational functions that are severely damaged. In the Lomma project, a balancing method of nature and landscape resources has been used to achieve a certain amount of green qualities and an efficient distribution of well-being characteristics. City planning that fails to appropriately integrate green spaces into our work, housing and everyday environments will likely result in lower productivity, poorer public health and associated increases in social expenditures

Keywords

Well-being; health; balancing; compensation; green area factor; landscape characteristics

Published in

Publisher: International Federation of Landscape Architecture

Conference

IFLA World Congress 2010

Authors' information