It’s ok to be wilder: Preference for natural growth in urban green spaces in a tropical city
Introduction
There is a growing consensus that the complexity of urban ecosystems benefits both nature and people in cities (Pickett et al., 2016). Urban green spaces (UGS), in particular, provide a variety of ecosystem services, including biodiversity, microclimate mitigation, and storm water management (Breuste et al., 2013; Elmqvist et al., 2013), and are crucial for socio-cultural aspects, such as well-being and human health (Tzoulas et al., 2007). UGS management that supports ecological processes will enhance habitat quality (Aronson et al., 2017), and sustainable urban greening strategies contribute considerably to both ecological functions and quality of life in a compact city context (Jim, 2013). Even manicured lawns that traditionally support recreational activities, social relations, and aesthetic pleasure in cities have the potential to contribute to urban biodiversity by applying alternative heterogeneous and cost-effective principles (Ignatieva et al., 2017).
Spaces allowing vegetation to grow spontaneously in succession towards wilderness (Navarro and Pereira, 2015) are typically referred to as being ‘wilder’. There is increasing scholastic interest in this type of urban vegetation because of its ecological and biophysical benefits (Del Tredici, 2010; Robinson and Lundholm, 2012). However, the spaces created by this process are not necessarily well received by the public. Some studies on the perception of different degrees of wildness of urban greenery have found a preference for manicured grass over unkempt greenery (Poškus and Poškienė, 2015; Talbot and Kaplan, 1984). Unkempt greenery is also sometimes associated with disservices, including fear of danger (Lyytimäki et al., 2008), risk of crime (Skår, 2010), or discomfort (Bixler and Floyd, 1997).
In more recent studies, scholars highlight the socio-ecological significance of a wild urban ecosystem’s contributions to sustainable and liveable cities (McKinney et al., 2017). Threlfall and Kendal (Threlfall and Kendal, 2018) stress that wilder urban ecosystems may increase ecological aesthetics, educational opportunities, and health and human benefits through their spatial and temporal diversity, unique composition, and contribution to urban ecosystems. Public acceptance of wilder landscapes has been addressed, with Kowarik (2018) highlighting the necessity of multiple approaches to understand the supply of, demands for, and access to urban wilderness. Public acceptability is found to vary depending on the vegetation structure (Brun et al., 2018), intensity of space usage/engagement (Danford et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2018), and a minimum of maintenance and accessibility (Gandy, 2013; Hofmann et al., 2012). These studies, as well as the literature showing an increasing openness to wild urban ecosystems, however, are based in Europe and North America. Few studies consider Asian tropical cities.
In Singapore, like most other developed cities, lawns form a significant proportion of the UGS. This is a major result of the nation’s greening campaign, ‘Green and Clean’. The program started in the 1960s; creating the representative image of its landscape and aided its rapid economic growth (Barnard and Heng, 2014). The emphasis on horticultural presentation requires a high frequency of labour-intensive maintenance (Vial et al., 2011), and simultaneously lowers the biodiversity conservation potential of the landscapes (Chong et al., 2014). Critics are now asking whether highly manicured urban greenery should be the primary image of a tropical country that used to be covered by dense primary forests (Wee and Corlett, 1986). Accordingly, Singapore has begun the next step in its greening policy, focusing on enriching biodiversity in urban environments, rejuvenating urban parks, enlivening streetscapes, and restructuring industry towards a more productive and sustainable landscape (Ministry of National Development, S., 2013). The National Parks Board (NParks), a key stakeholder in Singapore, is making an effort towards labour and resource effective maintenance in landscape management (CUGE, 2015). Wilder landscape is high on the urban agenda even though it has long been viewed as less preferred than manicured landscapes (Joanne Yu Ting et al., 2014).
In order to successfully implement wilder landscapes, management practices known to improve public perception need to be implemented, including: providing edge treatments indicating ‘cues to care’ (Nassauer, 1995), utilizing spontaneous vegetation to add aesthetic value (Kühn, 2006; Oudolf and Kingsbury, 2013), and controlling the degree of wildness through selective maintenance (Hwang and Yue, in press). At this point, the response of the public to differing levels of wildness and vegetation growth is unknown and, thus, was the subject of our study. In summary, with the temporal and contextual legitimacy of wilder urban greenery in Singapore in mind, our objective was to evaluate the public’s response to wilder UGS and the factors involved.
In this study, we investigated the following four questions: 1) To what degree will the public accept wilder UGS in the context of Singapore, where UGS is mostly manicured? 2) Are people’s perceptions of wilder UGS influenced by the type of UGS? 3) What are the key factors/social variables shaping wilder UGS preference? 4) Which landscape elements are preferable in wilder UGS? To answer those questions, we simulated wilder UGS by adjusting the intensity of the maintenance regime to allow spontaneous plant growth that could increase both ecological benefits and social acceptance. We then administered a photo survey to two groups of respondents. The survey showed three degrees of wildness in four types of typical UGS, and asked for the preferences of the respondents. It also asked which attributes of wilder landscapes might determine their preferences, and asked people to choose preferable landscape elements on moderately wilder lawn context. In this paper, ‘wildness’ or ‘wilder’ refer to the process by which the greenery is grown – arising spontaneously and grown without fertilizers and watering, whilst not precluding human intervention in the form of maintenance activities.
Section snippets
Study area
Singapore is situated one degree north of the equator at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula (103°50ʼE, 1°20ʼN); thus, its year-round tropical climate is naturally suited for plant growth. At the same time, as it is a 100% urbanized city state, a large proportion of the landscape consists of planned greenery with homogeneous manicured lawns, sometimes with single-tier shrubs planted beside them. The lawns are intensely controlled, requiring regular grass cutting on a fortnightly basis
Responses to level of wildness and UGS types
The means of the responses of the respondents to each item for each context-condition, the associated standard deviation, and the significant differences between the L1 (no wildness), L2 (low wildness), and L3 (medium wildness) vegetative growth conditions for each context are noted in Tables 2 and 3 for the general population and the nature group respectively.
In general, the HDB landscape and park were significantly preferred by the general population group over the streetscape and roof
Discussion
Urban wilderness is an issue that is increasingly gaining attention internationally (Kowarik, 2018; Threlfall and Kendal, 2018). While most studies on preference for wilder urban environments are mostly from cities in temperate regions, this is the first study that systemically analyses preference for wilder growth in UGS within a tropical city. This section discusses the survey’s findings on the accepted degree of wilder urban landscape, key attributes of acceptance, preferred landscape
Conclusion
Cities have traditionally planned urban greenery with intensive maintenance in mind, based on a preconception that the public prefers a manicured and neat landscape over wilder and messier vegetation. However, Singaporeans have grown more conscious of the value of wild and natural environments (O’Dempsey, 2014), causing some to debate whether they truly prefer ‘manicured’ lawns over ‘untamed wilderness’ (Kong and Yeoh, 1996). And in fact, this study shows Singaporeans positively perceive and
Acknowledgements
This work was made possible by funding from NUS-MOE (Ministry of Education) Tier1 Research Fund, Singapore under Grant Number R-295- 000-112- 112 (Singapore). The authors wish to thank the Centre for Urban Greenery and Ecology (CUGE) at the National Parks Board Singapore for supporting the survey. A special thanks to Joan Iverson Nassauer and Dr. Tan Puay Yokfor thoughtful comments and advice on the initial paper.
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