KOMMUNAL PLANERING FÖR URBANA GRÖNOMRÅDEN

Sammanfattning: During the last centuries, Sweden has become more urbanized and today 85% of the population are living in urban settlements. A future challenge for city planners is climate change, which is expected to lead to higher sea levels, rising temperatures, less snow and larger amounts of rainfall with more extreme precipitation. One approach for cities to deal with these challenges is to preserve urban greenspaces and the ecosystem services that they provide. For that reason, this essay aims to examine how municipalities are planning their urban green spaces and which motives are behind the planning for different ecosystem services. This was accomplished through a content analysis where three municipalities’ (Knivsta municipality, Uppsala municipality and Upplands Väsby municipality) planning and goal documents were examined. With the purpose to get knowledge about which ecosystem services were the most reoccurring. The results showed that the two most reoccurring ecosystem services in the three municipalities were recreation and biodiversity. The third most reoccurring ecosystem service in Uppsala municipality and Upplands Väsby municipality was water regulation, while in Knivsta municipality it was cultural heritage. The motives behind why the green spaces with these ecosystem services were seen as important were to prevent fragmentation of pathways and habitats important for biodiversity, and to ensure access to close and accessible greenspaces during urban infills and expansion. Furthermore, urban green spaces can be a part of the work for climate change adaption and for handling extreme precipitation.