Huế

The GreenCityLabHuế explores how Nature-based Solutions (NbS) can address urban challenges in Hue, such as climate change and urbanisation. It maximises the city’s green-blue potential by sharing knowledge on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and green-blue infrastructure (GBI), while offering space for creativity, discussion, and validation with input from decision-makers, researchers, stakeholders, and citizens.

Modelling the effects of green-blue infrastructure

Modelling at selected sites demonstrated that greening interventions, such as tree planting, green facades, and vegetated strips, reduce air temperature and improve outdoor thermal comfort, with tree shade identified as the most effective cooling measure. Co-benefits, including air quality improvement, recreation, and aesthetic value, were also highlighted. At the city scale, GIS-based modelling assessed the potential of widespread NbS adoption to enhance ecosystem services like air quality regulation, recreation, and green space accessibility. This analysis identified priority areas for greening, particularly in planned urban expansion zones, and provided insights into spatial and systemic NbS benefits.

Analysing policies and involving stakeholders’ and citizens’ views

Policy and governance analyses identified barriers to effective NbS implementation in Hue, including insufficient policies, lack of expertise, poor project coordination, limited public awareness, and funding challenges. Stakeholder roundtables revealed that strategic governance, clear guidelines, and cross-sectoral cooperation would be crucial for successful NbS integration. Participatory events with citizens and community leaders further emphasized citizens’ concerns over urban densification, heat stress, and unequal green space distribution and access across the city. Residents called for better maintenance of existing green spaces, the creation of new, evenly distributed green areas, and greater involvement of citizens in planning processes. A survey collected additional data on citizen’s environmental perceptions, ecosystem service demands, and preferences for NbS designs.

Implementing Nature-based solutions

Four pilot projects of practical NbS implementation, developed in a co-creative process, including the improvement of an existing green space through the implementation of Nature-based Solutions, and the transformation of one small brownfield site along the riverbank into small-scale public green spaces, provided valuable lessons on implementation, approval processes, and feasibility of NbS in Hue, while showing that effective NbS projects can be implemented even with small land and budgets.

Digital activities

The GreenCityLabHuế also wants citizens to discover a glance of the huge diversity of green and blue spaces in Huế city through the GreenCityLabHuế Story Map.

Guiding governance on Nature-based solutions

The governance of green-blue infrastructure (GBI) as nature-based solution (NbS) is framed by various interrelated entry points, i.e., bodies of knowledge and information that guide urban planning, design, and maintenance of NbS. For example, these include societal and or socio-environmental challenges and issues — such as poor access to green spaces, urban heat, or lack of green space maintenance, as perceived by local stakeholders and citizens — and stated demands (particularly of the public) in regard to socio-environmental qualities to be delivered, improved, or safeguarded, in order to address perceived local challenges. This is contrasted by the co-benefits of NbS needed or desired locally, i.e., the targeted ecosystem services or benefits a NbS shall deliver to meet local stated demands and identified issues and challenges. Importantly, this ecosystem services delivery is mediated by various factors, e.g., the choice of GBI, but also NbS design. Both may be informed by stated preferences — i.e., expressed choices and opinions — of the local population. Such stated preferences, e.g., regarding specific qualities and features of the local natural or built environment including amenity features of green spaces, provide a useful reference for tailoring NbS to local contexts and increasing community acceptance. Finally, opportunities but also limitations, e.g., regarding spatial potential for NbS implementation, but also referring to local policies and financial aspects, guide NbS governance.

In order to enable a systematic exploration of these connections starting from any entry point, a mind map was developed as part of the GreenCityLabHue project to contextualise the above-mentioned entry points. Examples for each entry point are subsequently provided considering the state-of-the-art and based on findings of the GreenCityLabHue project including the typology of GBI elements, an expert assessments of ecosystem services delivery, an assessment of modelled impacts of NbS on outdoor thermal comfort, and a household survey conducted amongst residents of five wards within the former provincial city Hue. The mind map then captures linkages between entry points, e.g., GBI elements as NbS with ecosystem services and benefits potentially provided by them. It further situates both entry points within the broader context of societal challenges and stated demands, to indicate which types of green-blue infrastructure and associated benefits may help to meet local demand, thereby addressing perceived challenges. Finally, also opportunities as well as stated preferences are integrated into the mind map.

You may also explore the mind map interactively using the yEd Live online editor. The presented mind map is intended as a conversation starter for NbS, e.g., in the context of NbS co-creation. The mind map also aims at emphasising that NbS governance is complex, and that a variety of aspects should be considered in the planning, design, implementation and maintenance of NbS for achieving locally adapted, successful, and accepted solutions.

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