Possible Indicators for The Evaluation of The Performance of a Biophilic Urban Ecosystem

Abstract

As a sustainable design strategy, biophilic design incorporates natural elements into the built environment aiming to create healthy living settings. Indicators are one of the strongest communication tools in design for the provision of a resilient and sustainable human-nature relationship. They support all stages of policy-making, from designing policy frameworks, setting goals and tracking progress, to improving communication between government bodies and other actors involved in the process. Within this context, indicators function as performance measuring tools in designing and planning of biophilic cities. Despite the well-known benefits of biophilic design to human health and well-being, very few cities are systematically implementing biophilic design applications due to lack of practice, technical knowledge, established standards and procedures. This research aims to identify a set of possible indicators for the monitoring of a biophilic city by evaluating the functioning of the components of its ecosystem and the effectiveness of urban policies. The proposed indicator set targets to demonstrate how effectively a biophilic city achieves its goals and objectives as well as constitute a ground for the transformation of cities into biophilic cities by supporting the improvements for proposals of future planning. These indicators represent an initial attempt to develop a self-assessment tool for the investigation of the success of targets and goals related to the creation of a biophilic urban ecosystem. Establishing performance targets for the assessment of progress and developing these even further to test the set of indicators in a pilot study can be considered as a future research direction.