Awareness among users of a public space of its multifunctionality as green infrastructure

Cities must adapt to the effects of climate change and increase their resilience to them. Green infrastructure (GI) aids urban adaptation and resilience building efforts. Citizens’ attitudes to GI determine its uptake, while citizens with awareness of resilience initiatives have more engagement with and commitment to resilience. Awareness can be increased through awareness-raising strategies. The case of Westersingel urban floodplain, an example of a GI public space in Rotterdam which provides a flood protection function, was chosen for this research. This research assessed the public space users’ awareness of its resilience functions, as well as the driving factors of this awareness. Lastly, an awareness-raising strategy was designed for this case. The awareness of Westersingel urban floodplain users was assessed using a structured interview, along with information regarding the driving factors of awareness determined in the literature. Correlation analysis was done to determine the effect of different driving factors. Lastly, these results were used to design strategy for Rotterdam to raise awareness of the benefits of GI for climate adaptation and resilience. Only 4.4% of the sample was aware of the space’s flood protection function, while a further 2.9% were aware of other, specific resilience functions of the space. The largest category of respondents (48.5%) was not aware of any functions which the space could provide. Awareness is therefore assessed to be very low, which indicates a low engagement with urban resilience and ways to increase it. Factors with a significant relationship with awareness were a perception of flooding as a personal problem, a perception of flooding as a problem for Rotterdam, and environmental project involvement, though no strong relationship was found. There are likely further unknown factors with an effect on awareness. Low awareness indicates low engagement with resilience within the citizens surveyed for this study. Given the driving factors for awareness, this means that cultivating a perception that flooding is a problem which affects people personally, as well as the city, could increase people’s awareness towards solutions for it, as well as engagement with other environmental projects. An awareness-raising strategy could also be used, focusing on the benefits which GI can provide, such as improvement to the neighbourhood aesthetic, more natural areas and flood protection. This would lead to higher awareness and urban resilience.