Live with nature to live in nature: A public participatory mapping of place values of Atatürk Urban Forest

Abstract

Environmental management and decision-making fields face dualistic complexities of balancing societal progress and developments by addressing their needs and values while sustaining the capacity of ecosystem functioning. This pertains to the need to recognize the interconnectedness and dependencies of human and nature systems and the democratic and participatory approaches to ensure environmental sustainability. Despite this, the role of resource users and their underlying values in understanding coupled social-ecological systems (SES) has yet to be developed both in research and actual management and decision-making frameworks. This research, with a focus on human-nature relationships, aims to elicit and measure the place values of Atatürk Urban Forest (AUF) in Istanbul, Turkey. Place values are the diverse importance individuals attribute to the elements in the surrounding landscapes. Through adopting a plural valuation and public participatory value mapping approach, this research examines the AUF visitors' relational, intrinsic, and instrumental values to capture the many ways people facilitate relationships with nature and perceive its importance for their subjective well-being. Using the public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS) technique, a web-based questionnaire on ESRI's Survey123 was conducted on-site during the spring-summer of 2023. A total of 112 random site visitors participated resulting in a 29.3% survey participation rate. The survey collected the visitors' place value data points assigned for the AUF's physical landscape along with their non-spatial data on socio-demographics, pattern of use, and familiarity with the site. Accordingly, the collected place value points data were investigated by pattern and density spatial analysis, and the non-spatial data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and non-parametric one-way ANOVA and T-tests. The descriptive analysis of public-anchored place values signified the importance of the AUF landscape for its aesthetic values. A contextual hierarchy of anchored place values, additionally revealed the aesthetic value as the visitors' highest priority ranked value, biodiversity value as the second priority, and recreation value as the third priority place value of AUF. In addition to these, in descending order, place values including therapeutic, future, social relations, intrinsic, cultural heritage, economic, learning, and spiritual values contextualize AUF as a multifunctional SES. The overall density analysis of all the mapped place values demonstrated the most distinguishable landscape elements where simultaneously concentrate diverse and intensified place values, in areas such as the natural pond areas, festival area, café area and the children's playground. Density analysis of the mapped place values corresponding to relational, intrinsic, and instrumental values revealed the spatial convergence of relational and intrinsic values. The co-existence of these values across the AUF landscape reflected the dependencies of 'live in nature' and 'live with nature' human-nature relationships in the urban forest, strengthening our comprehension of AUF as an interconnected SES. The statistical analysis did not yield in significant association for participants' familiarity with the site and pattern of use in conjunction with their identified place values. Only education indicator of participants' socio-demographics revealed a positive association with the mean assignment of relational and intrinsic values. Accordingly, the visitors with university-level education assigned more intrinsic values to the urban forest denoting their understanding of nature's importance for its own sake. Under-university level graduates, on the other hand, assigned more relational values reflecting the value concept's appeal to a broader audience. Overall, the results of the research equip landscape management and design with a visual and evaluative tool to inform the experts about the most important areas of value across the AUF landscape according to the public's perception. Furthermore, future research directions and insights for the landscape architecture field adopting PPGIS to study place values in the landscape scales are extensively discussed. Finally, this research advocates for managing lands in line with people's values and for their further integration into adaptive management and decision-making frameworks in light of ensuring social-ecological sustainability and well-being.