Identifying Cultural Ecosystem Services and Relevant Landscape Elements Provided by Urban Green Space throughout History from an Information Communication Perspective

Abstract

Throughout the long history of urban expansion and development, some of the natural mountains, lakes, and rivers that were once located on the outskirts of a city have gradually been encircled within it and have become nature in the urban, i.e., they are now in the heart of the city. These are not only green infrastructure for contemporary cities; they have also accumulated a rich cultural heritage and are closely related to the physical health and subjective well-being of city dwellers. The objectives of this study were: (1) to identify the no-material services that the public perceives from UGSs throughout history that contribute to subjective well-being; (2) to analyze which landscape elements are associated with the provision of such services and then to clarify the value of UGSs throughout history and provide a theoretical basis for urban managers. We returned to the original concept of cultural services (information services) to understand how UGSs throughout history, as information sources, have provided subjective well-being to specific groups of people. And we build a classification system for information services based on this understanding. Based on existing research methods on cultural services, we found that collecting information carriers such as texts, images, and interview transcripts is a more effective way to identifying the intangible services provided by a landscape than monetary methods. From understanding of the information communication process, we attempted to integrate the supply and demand indicators of information services. We validated the feasibility of the method of information service identification using Yuexiu Hill in Guangzhou, which has a construction history of 2000 years, as an example. Through the word frequency statistics of 1063 ancient poems (a type of information carrier), elements of the historical landscape of Yuexiu Hill and the information services provided in the past were identified. After that, semantic networks were constructed to analyze the association between elements and services. The results of this study show that information service identification is an effective method of analyzing the effect of the promotion of UGSs throughout history on the subjective well-being of the public. The provision of information services depends on the accumulation and dissemination of environmental information; both natural and cultural elements, especially symbolic elements, play an important role in this process.