A Review of the Evolution of Perspectives and Approaches to Integrating the Concept of Ecosystem Services in Urban Development Planning

The quality of natural resources has been significantly degraded due to the increase of urban population along with the expansion of cities, development of transportation networks and industrial activities. In this regard, sustainable urban development was proposed as a model to address these challenges and an opportunity to establish a new mechanism to build a desired urban future with the precondition of coordination with natural ecosystems. Land use change due to rapid urbanization has led to environmental changes affecting ecosystem services. The impact of land use change on the ecological environment has become one of the important research areas to the extent that the integration of ecosystem services in urban planning is now highly welcomed. A review of studies shows that the integration of ecosystem services in development planning is still in its infancy. Common approaches have focused more on understanding the concept of ecosystem services (understanding by experts, policymakers, and stakeholders, and content analysis of documents) and have not definitively integrated ecosystem services into urban plans. The integration of ecosystem services into planning has been discussed mainly at the theoretical level and there is less evidence of practical efforts. Although the mapping, assessment, and evaluation of ecosystem services have developed significantly over the past decade, there are still problems in defining and operating ecosystem services in planning due to static monitoring frameworks and inadequate tools. Lack of standards in evaluation and targeting protocols, lack of expertise, lack of data are other barriers to operationalization of this process.