Capturing residents' perceptions of green spaces in densifying urban landscapes - The potentials of mental mapping

Understanding residents' perceptions of green-blue infrastructure (GBI) is critical to ensure continued access to its associated benefits in growing and densifying urban landscapes. Physical availability and accessibility of green spaces alone do not directly translate to actual appreciation and use. Residents' sense of place can determine if benefits from GBI are realized and how landscape changes may be perceived. In this study, set in sub-urban Stockholm, Sweden, we applied a mixed-methods approach combining mental mapping with followup interviews to investigate how such methodology can improve our understanding of residents' perception of the recreational use of GBI. For the mental mapping exercise, participants drew, freehand, a map of appreciated neighborhood places for recreational purposes. Our results clearly show that mental mapping provides relevant information on individual and collective perceptions of recreational GBI, linkages between green-blue and gray infrastructure elements, and recreational hot-spots of importance to the local inhabitants. The unguided approach to welding local knowledge with spatial expressions makes the method well suited to contribute to a better understanding of plural senses of place with regards to the recreational use of GBI in rapidly urbanizing landscapes and an enhanced capacity to recognise locally appreciated recreational spaces in planning and practical management.