Decision making, planning and design for the conservation of indigenous vegetation within urban development

Utilization of indigenous vegetation as parts of the urban landscape is still a problematic matter in decision making and planning. On one hand, there are many activities in cities and towns aimed at providing more green areas. On the other hand, there is an increasing destruction of indigenous vegetation, not only for building purposes, but also partly by extreme maintenance of urban open spaces and an increasing number of recreation activities. Despite there is a considerable amount of scientific knowledge on indigenous plants in urban and sub-urban areas, the use of this knowledge is still low. The socio-economic knowledge about such vegetation (acceptance, utilization, economic value, etc.) is mostly non-existent in many regions. The indigenous vegetation has to become an important aspect of urban biodiversity as well as part of the living space of the urban dwellers. This links two important subjects: the specific nature of the original biomes in which the urban region is situated, and the cultural aspect of acceptance of various kinds of nature. The nature preservation strategies, especially of Central European cities, show a lack of willingness to preserve indigenous vegetation sites. But there are instruments of planning and methods which allow better preservation of these areas. Furthermore, it must be determined whether it is possible to reduce the human impact on open spaces by reintroducing indigenous vegetation, and under what circumstances this works. The cost reduction of maintenance of urban green areas is seen as one major factor linking to this target. Human acceptance is still an uncertam factor which has to be investigated and will, in the long term, be improved by education and evaluated under different cultural and social aspects. The management of the classical conflict between pure species or habitat preservation in open urban spaces of untouched nature and the high pressure of recreation on the same sites, is explained by example. An important question follows: will it be possible to establish "new" indigenous nature in the urban and sub-urban spaces? (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V All rights reserved.