Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja

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Green infrastructure: systematic literature review

Jun Ying, Xiaojing Zhang, Yiqi Zhang & Svitlana Bilan

To cite this article: Jun Ying, Xiaojing Zhang, Yiqi Zhang & Svitlana Bilan (2022) Green
infrastructure: systematic literature review, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 35:1,
343-366, DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2021.1893202

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ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA
2022, VOL. 35, NO. 1, 343–366
https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1893202

Green infrastructure: systematic literature review

Jun Yinga, Xiaojing Zhanga, Yiqi Zhanga and Svitlana Bilanb
a
School of Landscape Architecture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou, China; bFaculty of
Administration and Social Sciences, University of Economics and Innovation, Lublin, Poland

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Green infrastructure can effectively coordinate environmental, Received 7 September 2020
social and economic development, and has become one of the Accepted 16 February 2021
important strategies to achieve sustainable development. This
KEYWORDS
study used CiteSpace and VOSviewer to analyze 2194 papers in
Green infrastructure; Web
the field of green infrastructure published from 1995 to 2019 in of Science (WOS);
the Web of Science database using the bibliometrics and visual- CiteSpace; VOSviewer;
ization methods. Results demonstrate a substantial increase in the bibliometric analysis
number of studies on green infrastructure in recent years, with
European and American countries leading the study of green JEL CODES
infrastructure. Landscape and Urban Planning, Urban Forestry & Q01; Q56; Q57
Urban Greening, and Journal of Environmental Management are
the first three cited journals in green infrastructure study. By
studying co-cited literature, the study of green infrastructure has
been found to involve the relationship between green infrastruc-
ture and ecosystem and human health, construction, evaluation
and management of green infrastructure, and analysis of a special
aspect of green infrastructure, among others. Clustering analysis
results of green infrastructure keywords indicate that the existing
studies have concentrated on green infrastructure in stormwater
management, ecosystem services, biodiversity protection, and cli-
mate change. This study provides references for green infrastruc-
ture for sustainable environment development.

1. Introduction
In view of the contradiction and conflict between socioeconomic development and
the natural ecosystem (Lu et al., 2020; Shan & Duchi, 2020; Solonenko, 2019), such
ideas as sustainable development, circular economy, and smart growth have become
the core of current environmental issues (Barbesgaard, 2017; Rodrıguez et al., 2020;
Thomas & Littlewood, 2010; Tran & Beddewela, 2020; Villate et al., 2020). Green
infrastructure, as an effective method to coordinate environmental, social, and eco-
nomic development, has become one of the important strategies to achieve sustain-
able development (Ahern, 2011; Apostolopoulou & Adams, 2015; Cortinovis &
Geneletti, 2018; De Valck et al., 2019). The concept of green infrastructure is a crucial

CONTACT Svitlana Bilan [email protected]; Yiqi Zhang [email protected]

ß 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
344 J. YING ET AL.

node in the exploration of “harmonious coexistence between human and nature,” and
its formation has experienced lengthy concept preparation and accumulation
(Benedict & McMahon, 2002). The design concepts of “protecting nature” and
“respecting nature” have been recognized by the public previously, but nature is in a
relatively passive state. By contrast, “green infrastructure” attaches considerable import-
ance to the coordination between nature protection and human construction, as well as
artificial facilities. Moreover, “green infrastructure” advocates actively maintaining,
restoring, building, and even rebuilding green network (Ying et al., 2011; Zhai, 2012).
Green infrastructure plays important roles in adapting to climate change (Geneletti &
Zardo, 2016; Takacs et al., 2016), improving stormwater management capacity
(Pappalardo et al., 2017; Raei et al., 2019) , alleviating heat island effect (Saaroni et al.,
2018; Wang & Banzhaf, 2018), and reducing environmental pollution (Livesley et al.,
2016). This type of infrastructure is the natural life support system of regional environ-
ment and lays an ecological security foundation for sustainable environment develop-
ment. In terms of social culture, green infrastructure can improve the built
environment, provide people with opportunities of getting close to nature, enhance
landscape aesthetics, and promote social equality, thereby improving social well-being
and human health (Coutts & Hahn, 2015; Ko & Son, 2018; Sun et al., 2019). In add-
ition, green infrastructure can attract tourists, consumers, and investments by enhanc-
ing environmental quality, bringing effective economic benefits to surrounding areas,
and promoting the prosperity and sustainable development of the regional economy
(De-Miguel-Molina et al., 2019; Graça et al., 2017; Wolf et al., 2020).
The existing studies of green infrastructure involve a wide range of fields, such as
environmental science, urbanology, geography, botany, architecture, and economics.
The theories, methods, and technology of green infrastructure have been frequently
discussed among researchers and formed different study branches. First, many studies
have investigated the evolution of the concept and core value of green infrastructure.
Wang and Banzhaf (2018) summarized the evolution of green infrastructure by
searching papers on green infrastructure in four databases, including Web of Science
(WOS), as well as books and documents published by international organizations,
government agencies, and research institutions as of 2016; and emphasized the
importance of multifunction for the study and development of green infrastructure
(Wang & Banzhaf, 2018). Second, scholars have systematically reviewed a certain
branch of green infrastructure. Mcfarland et al. (2019) discussed the stormwater man-
agement of green infrastructure and reviewed the relevant literature to provide
storm–water management guidelines for different types of green infrastructures
(McFarland et al., 2019). Brzoska and Spage (2020) investigated the evaluation of eco-
system services in green infrastructure, and analyzed 76 papers published from 2000
to 2019 in WOS and Scopus to obtain the main types and generalized methods of the
evaluation of ecosystem services in green infrastructure (Brzoska & Spage, 2020). In
addition, studies have analyzed the research hotspots and development trends of
green infrastructure. Anastasia Chatzimentor et al. (2020) analyzed 313 papers pub-
lished by 28 European Union (EU) member states from 2008 to 2019, and compre-
hensively summarized the theme clusters and latest academic frontiers of green
infrastructure study in Europe (Chatzimentor et al., 2020).
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 345

The study of green infrastructure is based on concept development and evolution

and focuses on the research trends of a certain branch of green infrastructure or cer-
tain region. Thus, the current research used the method of bibliometrics to conduct a
multi-dimensional visual analysis of the distribution, frontier, and trend of the litera-
ture on green infrastructure (Latapı Agudelo et al., 2019; Lu et al., 2019; Sana Ben
et al., 2020). This method aims to systematically expound the knowledge evolution
and development frontier of green infrastructure from an extensive longitudinal per-
spective, expecting to provide references for the strategic study of green infrastructure
that contributes to sustainable development.

2. Methodology and data sources

2.1. Methodology
Scientific knowledge map is an emerging study method in the fields of scientometrics
and informatics in recent years. This method can reveal the knowledge sources and
development law of a certain field and expresses the knowledge structure and evolu-
tion law in fields related to graphics. Scientific knowledge map has the properties and
characteristics of “graph” and “spectrum.” That is, scientific knowledge map is a vis-
ual graph and a serialized knowledge pedigree (Liu et al., 2020).
The color of each node from blue to red in the graph of CiteSpace represents the
progress of time, and the size of nodes and clarity of labels represent the occurrence
frequency. The tree diagram and connection thickness between nodes reflect the infor-
mation correlation degree, thereby providing additional analysis parameters, including
the network mediation center degree and substantially complete diagrams, and time
series analysis function (Zhang et al., 2020). VOSviewer is a visualization software
developed by Van Eck and Waltman of Leiden University in the Netherlands. The soft-
ware has outstanding clustering function, and the visualization effect is also conducive
to exploring the fields involved in the subject and research hotspots in various fields
(Song & Chi, 2016). The font size of the nodes in the graph represents their occurrence
frequency, and different colors of the nodes represent the idea that they belong to dif-
ferent clusters (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010). The two types of software can complement
each other’s advantages, and have been widely used in scientometrics.
In this study, knowledge map visualization used CiteSpace to generate the know-
ledge maps of publishing countries, publishing institutions, and co-cited magazines,
and analyze the basic situation of foreign green infrastructure study. Moreover, the
basic knowledge, research hotspots, and trends of foreign green infrastructure study
were explored combined with the cited literature, subject distribution, and keyword
co-occurrence knowledge maps generated by CiteSpace and the keyword clustering
graphs generated by VOSviewer.

2.2. Sources of literature data

The basic data of this study was collected from the core collection of the WOS data-
base with the keyword “green infrastructure” as the retrieval object. The first study
on “green infrastructure” has been found to be included in the WOS database in
346 J. YING ET AL.

Figure 1. Studies on green infrastructure collected in the WOS database.

Source: Authors.

1995. Therefore, the time span of retrieval was “1995–2019,” and four types of
Article, Proceedings Paper, Review, and Book review were selected. A total of 2194
papers were obtained, expecting to cover all study results on the basis of ensuring the
quality of document retrieval.
According to the statistical analysis of the literature retrieval results, under 10 stud-
ies on green infrastructure were published from 1995 to 2008. However, a rapid
growth occurred from 2009 to 2014, which exceeded 100 in a short period. An evi-
dent study upsurge has been noted since 2015, and the number of published studies
has increased by the hundreds annually (Figure 1). Evidently, “green infrastructure” is
a topic worthy of in-depth discussion and study.

3. Overview of green infrastructure study

3.1. Distribution of countries publishing studies on green infrastructure
In CiteSpace, the nodes were set as countries, and the time zone function was used to
draw the time zone evolution map of countries and regions studying green infrastruc-
ture. By setting the threshold, the number of studies in the years when over 2 studies
were published was summarized, and 62 key nodes were obtained (Figure 2). To date,
747 articles were published in the US, accounting for 34.05% of the global total and
ranking first, followed by China (231, 10.53%), the UK (225, 10.26%), Italy (160,
7.29%), Australia (153, 6.97%), and Germany (141, 6.43%). The proportions of other
countries are all below 5% (Table 1). Moreover, European and American countries
have conducted numerous studies on green infrastructure, and their study results
have substantial reference significance.

3.2. Distribution of countries publishing studies on green infrastructure

In CiteSpace, the nodes were set as Institutions, and the threshold was set to Top
N ¼ 50 to visualize the knowledge map classified by institution. One node represents
a scientific research institution, and the node size represents the number of papers
published by the institution. The larger the node, the more evident the label font
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 347

Figure 2. Time zone evolution map of countries and regions studying green infrastructure.
Source: Authors.

Table 1. Ratio of green infrastructure research literature to the total published studies in various
countries from 2002 to 2019.
Country Count Percentage (%)
US 747 34.05
China 231 10.53
UK 225 10.26
Italy 160 7.29
Australia 153 6.97
Germany 141 6.43
Swenden 100 4.56
Canada 92 4.19
The Netherlands 89 4.05
Spain 79 3.60
Others 177 8.07
Source: Authors.

(font is weighed and opacity is high), thereby indicating that the institution has pub-
lished numerous studies (Figure 3). The analysis results indicate that the top 6 insti-
tutions publishing papers on green infrastructure (including parallel ranking) are 49
papers by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a centrality of 0.02;
31 by Swedish University of Science and Technology Agriculture, 0.12; 25 by UFZ
Helmholtz Centre Environmental Research, 0; 19 by the University of Hong Kong,
0.04; 19 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 0.01; and 19 by Drexel University,
0.01.Three institutions have high suddenness: Drexel University, 7.02; Swedish
University of Agricultural Sciences, 5.98; and Wageningen University, 4.50 (Table 2).
The following points can be obtained by analyzing the results of visualization map.
(1) From the perspective of institution distribution, the argument that institutions in
European and American countries lead the study of green infrastructure is supported,
among which Drexel University and the US EPA are the main representatives.
European and American countries, as well as some regions in Asia, have previously
conducted studies on green infrastructure, thereby showing a good development
348 J. YING ET AL.

Figure 3. Number of papers published by green infrastructure research institutions and the central-
ity network of the papers.
Source: Authors.

Table 2. Top 8 institutions with the strongest citation bursts.

Institutions Year Strength Begin End 1995–2019
Drexel Univ 1995 7.0184 2010 2013

US Forest Serv 1995 3.3544 2010 2013

Stockholm Univ 1995 3.6774 2013 2016

US EPA 1995 3.555 2014 2015

Wageningen Univ 1995 4.4974 2015 2016

Arizona State Univ 1995 4.1075 2016 2019

Swedish Univ Agr Sci 1995 5.9818 2017 2019

Chinese Acad Sci 1995 4.1213 2017 2019

Source: Authors.

trend. (2) According to the structural analysis of the map, clusters are generated
according to the cooperative relationship among different institutions. Institutions that
have published the most number of papers are scattered in the dense cluster groups. In
general, each cluster has institutions that have published a substantial number of stud-
ies. Therefore, the generation of each cluster may be directly related to institutions with
considerable influence. (3) The analysis of various indicators has indicated that 15 and
38 institutions have centralities above 0.12 and above 0.04, respectively. The highest
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 349

Table 3. Frequently cited journals of the green infrastructure study.

Serial number Name of Journals Number of citations Impact factors Half-life period
1 Landscape and Urban Planning 1338 5.441 12
2 Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 728 4.021 8
3 Journal of Environmental Management 701 5.647 10
4 Ecological Economics 525 4.482 7
5 Science of the Total Environment 493 6.551 8
6 Landscape Ecology 460 3.385 11
7 Science 439 41.845 8
8 Land Use Policy 418 3.682 10
9 Environmental Management 415 2.561 11
10 Environmental Pollution 409 6.792 8
Source: Authors.

centrality of the six institutions that have published the most number of studies is 0.12,
and the remainder has centrality below 0.04. This result indicates that institutions that
have published numerous papers have low centrality. According to the definition of
centrality, this phenomenon can reflect that institutions with numerous papers have
weak direct correlation with other institutions, and the connectivity in the network of
the institutions is low. This situation is partly the result of such institutions having
complete research systems and strong scientific research capabilities. However, the
cooperation between institutions with the same discipline and varying research direc-
tions and even different disciplines and diverse research directions has significance for
academic exchange and development (Liu, 2018; Lu et al. 2019).

3.3. Distribution of cited journals

In CiteSpace, the nodes were set as Cited Journals to generate the knowledge map of
the co-cited journals. Table 3 lists the top 10 cited journals of green infrastructure
research, and summarizes the impact factors and half-life period. Green
Infrastructure Finance: Leading Initiatives and Research is a book that is not listed on
the table. The citation frequency is 250 times, which has high reference value. The
following conclusions can be drawn after comprehensively analyzing the fields cov-
ered by the 10 journals and other journals with high centrality. (1) At present, the
majority of the green infrastructure journals focus on the environment, ecology, or
refined types (e.g. forestry and water resources), and are often closely related to cities.
(2) Journals with high citation frequency have strong impact factors (indicating that
the published papers have strong influence in academia) and long half-life period
(indicating that the published studies have long timeliness; that is, numerous papers
published many years ago continue to be cited). The three indicators show that the
following journals lead the academic sector of green infrastructure study.

4. Trend of green infrastructure study

4.1. Main knowledge base
4.1.1. Distribution of disciplines
CiteSpace was used to draw the knowledge map of discipline distribution structure of
2194 documents, in which 73 nodes were obtained (Figure 4). The analysis results are
350 J. YING ET AL.

Figure 4. Disciplinary distribution structure of green infrastructure research.

Source: Authors.

as follows. (1) Analysis of mainstream disciplines: Environmental sciences is the dis-

cipline with the most number of studies, which account for over 50%, and environ-
mental sciences is the mainstream discipline. The citation frequencies of urban
studies, engineering, ecology, and water resources are above 200 times, thereby show-
ing strong centrality. This result indicates that numerous studies of green infrastruc-
ture have been conducted in the aforementioned disciplines. (2) Time distribution
and clustering analysis of disciplines: Timeline View in CiteSpace was used, the key-
words were taken as the clustering elements, and the burst function was used. With
the passage of time, the discipline distribution of “green infrastructure” study has
become increasingly extensive. The basic trend of discipline distribution was summar-
ized according to the visualization analysis. From 2006 to 2007, the studies mainly
focused on “environmental science” and “urban research.” From 2007 to 2010, engin-
eering and agriculture were studied. Thereafter, the discipline distribution showed
evident scattered trend, among which geological geography, botany, architecture, and
business economics were frequently investigated. Note that “green infrastructure” has
an extensive study scope, and the study depth in different disciplines should be fur-
ther developed. (3) Analysis of research directions with development potential. The
analysis results of CiteSpace were derived and analyzed from three aspects. First, the
occurrence time, frequency, and centrality of research directions were taken as
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 351

comprehensive analysis indicators. Meaningful research directions with frequency

above 15 times or centrality over 0.1 in the recent 5 years (i.e. 2014–2019) were
selected. The following directions were summarized: remote sensing, meteorology and
atmospheric science, operational research and management, and computer science.
Second, the subjects with high centrality (0.3) but low frequency (50 times) before
2014 were selected. Moreover the following directions were obtained: business and
economics, materials science, and public administration. This fields had not been fully
developed but had considerable research significance. Third, the disciplines with
strong burst (3) but low frequency (50) were screened, and two directions were
obtained, namely, limnology and marine and freshwater biology. In summary,
increasing studies that prove green infrastructure can maintain multiple values and
benefits have been conducted (Meerow & Newell, 2017). However, people have insuf-
ficient abilities to acquire knowledge and understand specific types of green infra-
structure values (Karanikola et al., 2016). By contrast, the existing studies on green
infrastructure have caused considerable repercussions in the ecological environment.
The study branches of biophysics (biodiversity) and commercial economy (roof
greening and stormwater management) are expanding, but only a few quantitative
analysis systems can provide strong evidence of the impact of green infrastructure on
these two aspects (Tao et al., 2017). In addition, the study of the social, cultural, and
insurance values of green infrastructure is scarce and remains in the “blind zone”
(Gomez-Baggethun & Barton, 2013).
From the analysis of disciplinary distribution, it can be seen that green infrastruc-
ture has its own research emphasis in different disciplinary areas and has different
understandings of the concept of green infrastructure (Zhang & Chui, 2019).
Therefore, diversified concepts of green infrastructure have been formed based on dif-
ferent disciplinary perspectives, which can be summarized into three types of con-
cepts. The first category is the concept of green infrastructure defined from the
perspective of ecosystem protection, mainly including Environmental Sciences,
Environmental Ecology, Biodiversity Conservation, etc. (TEEB, 2010; Termorshuizen
& Opdam, 2009). The second category is the residential environment disciplines such
as Urban Studies, Regional&Urban Planning, etc., and the definition of green infra-
structure from the perspective of serving the needs of human settlements (De la
Barrera et al., 2016; Parker & Simpson, 2018; Venkataramanan et al., 2019). The third
type focuses on municipal Engineering disciplines such as Engineering, Water
Resources and Architecture, and defines green infrastructure from the perspective of
greening municipal Engineering facilities (Hoover & Hopton, 2019; Venkataramanan
et al., 2020) (Table 4).

4.1.2. Analysis of literature co-citation

Highly cited literature is often the knowledge base of theme development, and thor-
oughly analyzing highly cited literature can reveal the origin and orientation of the
“green infrastructure” research. Data were input into CiteSpace, and “cited reference”
was selected to obtain the co-citation network map (Figure 5). When the threshold
value was adjusted to 50, the node labels (authors and years of cited documents) with
over 50 cited times displayed. Cluster labels (#0–#6) were generated by keywords by
352 J. YING ET AL.

Table 4. Green infrastructure related disciplines and key definitions.

Disciplines Objects Key definitions
Environmental ecology Capacity of The subset of the interactions between biophysical
(e.g. Environmental an ecosystem structures, biodiversity and ecosystem processes that
Sciences, Environmental to provide ecosystem underpin the capacity of an ecosystem to provide
Ecology, Biodiversity services ecosystem services, including supporting,
Conservation） provisioning, regulating, and cultural services
(Termorshuizen & Opdam, 2009; TEEB, 2010).
Human Environment Maintaining and Well-structured vegetated pieces of land located in a
(e.g. Urban Studies, improving human city with differentiations in vegetation cover.
Regional & Urban well-being Considered as public goods which allow free access
Planning） to all citizens and represent pockets of nature for all
residents (De la Barrera et al., 2016; Chatzimentor
et al., 2020; Parker & Simpson, 2018).
Municipal Engineering Greening of A set of green strategies in built environments that
(e.g. Engineering, Water municipal serve a variety of municipal needs such as managing
Resources, Architecture) facilities flooding, improving water quality, reducing
environmental pollution, and, adapting to climate
change (Hoover & Hopton 2019; Venkataramanan
et al., 2020)
Source: Authors.

Figure 5. Distribution of highly cited literature on green infrastructure.

Source: Authors.
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 353

using clustering function. The highly cited studies are concentrated in #0, thereby
indicating that the reference group of #0 is the core of the current green infrastruc-
ture research.
The visualization results in the map were analyzed and summarized. From the
time perspective, the clusters generated by the early studies on green infrastructure
were relatively concentrated. Over time, the studies spread around with the early clus-
ters as the center, and new research clusters were generated. The highly cited studies
were in the core areas with dense clusters, thereby further verifying that the cited lit-
erature had relatively laid the knowledge foundation of the subject research.
According to the correlation degree of each cluster, the research on green infrastruc-
ture developed rapidly. The research situation mapped by co-citation networks before
2009 showed a typical initial state of research. The research network had strong con-
centration and high overlap degree, with only a set of clear branches and single direc-
tion. Various problems of the traditional development model (e.g. biodiversity and
resource utilization) were considered from the urban economy perspective. Through
further refinement and extension in this cluster, research topics on green infrastruc-
ture and stormwater management occurred (This clustering was developed and
enriched in the later period). From 2009 to 2013, the cited literature were supple-
mented and expanded on the basis of previous clustering, in which network overlap
occurred. However, more development direction occurred, thereby laying the founda-
tion for the subsequent theoretical research. Since 2013, evident multi-directional
research branches have emerged and new clusters have been generated on the basis
of the previous literature accumulation to comprehensibly and thoroughly discuss the
combination of green infrastructure and different fields. From the content perspec-
tive, the study of green infrastructure was centered on human health embodied in
two aspects. One aspect is the direct influence of green infrastructure on human
physical and mental health. The other aspect is the indirect influence of green infra-
structure on human health by influencing human living environment. Many studies
have focused on the key word “city.”
Table 5 lists 8 classic studies on green infrastructure, which have been cited over
50 times. By analyzing the eight studies, three contents can be summarized. (1)
Relationship among green infrastructure, ecosystem, and human health. “Promoting
ecosystem and human health in urban areas using green infrastructure: A literature
review published by Tzoulas et al. (2007) is the most influential and representative.
The definitions of ecosystem health and human health are expounded, and the influ-
ence of green infrastructure is further analyzed. The discussion is supported by the
mass literature. Different conceptual models are dialectically analyzed, and a concep-
tual framework combining green infrastructure, ecosystem, human health, and well-
being is developed, thereby laying the foundation for interdisciplinary “concept
convergence” (Tzoulas et al., 2007). (2) Construction, evaluation, and management of
green infrastructure. This aspect has a large content span and is mentioned in all
studies. First, “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment” is mentioned in five studies, indi-
cating that the assessment system is extremely authoritative. Second, considerable
focus is provided to land issues. Gill et al. (2008) argued that local land use and
coverage are direct driving factors of ecosystem service change in the urbanization
354 J. YING ET AL.

Table 5. Highly cited literature of the green infrastructure research.

Cluste-
Serial Citation The first Literature ring
number frequency author Year Title source label
1 90 Tzoulas K 2007 Promoting ecosystem and human LANDSCAPE AND 0
health in urban areas using URBAN PLANNING
Green Infrastructure: A
literature review
2 85 Gomez- 2013 Classifying and valuing ecosystem ECOL ECON 4
baggethun E services for urban planning
3 62 Bowler DE 2010 Urban greening to cool towns LANDSCAPE AND 1
and cities: A systematic review URBAN PLANNING
of the empirical evidence
4 57 Wolch JR 2014 Green Alley Programs: Planning LANDSCAPE AND 13
for a sustainable urban URBAN PLANNING
infrastructure?
5 55 Pataki DE 2011 Coupling biogeochemical cycles FRONT ECOL ENVIRON 3
in urban environments:
ecosystem services, green
solutions, and misconceptions
6 55 Gill SE 2007 Characterising the urban BUILT ENV 0
environment of UK cities and
towns: A template for
landscape planning
7 51 Andersson E 2014 Reconnecting Cities to the AMBIO 1
Biosphere: Stewardship of
Green Infrastructure and Urban
Ecosystem Services
8 50 Cameron RWF 2012 The domestic garden—Its URBAN FOR 4
contribution to urban green URBAN GREE
infrastructure
Source: Authors.

process (Gill et al., 2008). Bowler et al. (2010) also explained that although green
infrastructure projects have extensive theme and spatial scale, they have the com-
mon goal of realizing sustainable land management planning (Bowler et al., 2010).
Moreover, the services and hazards of ecosystem and green infrastructure are dia-
lectically analyzed and evaluated. Pataki et al. (2011) conducted a detailed analysis
and found that the costs and benefits and services and hazards of an ecosystem
should be weighted in green infrastructure construction (Pataki et al., 2011).
Moreover, the various benefits of green infrastructure should be quantitatively ana-
lyzed to lay the foundation for construction planning. Lastly, sufficient attention
should be given to people’s active role in management. Andersson et al. (2014) rec-
ommended that the service of urban ecosystem is generated by the complex inter-
action between ecological process and human activities. Therefore, the synergy
between ecology and society should be emphasized, thereby enabling ecosystem
managers across different scales, departments, and administrative boundaries to
play their roles (Andersson et al., 2014). Note that management is restricted by
human demands and social, economic, and cultural conditions. (3) Analysis of the
special contents of green infrastructure. The representative scholars are Cameron et
al. (2012) and Newell et al. (2013). Green infrastructure is composed of multiple
components. “Family Garden” (Cameron et al., 2012) and “Greenway” (Newell
et al., 2013) are illustrated in the literature.
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 355

Table 6. Keyword burst detection in the green infrastructure research.

Keywords Year Strength Begin End 1995–2019
Sustainability 1995 3.7258 2009 2012

Urban area 1995 6.7832 2010 2014

Stormwater management 1995 3.6779 2010 2012

Ecological network 1995 3.3545 2010 2013

Urban ecosystem 1995 3.4451 2011 2013

Energy 1995 4.0205 2011 2013

Permeable pavement 1995 4.2854 2013 2015

Landscape architecture 1995 3.4263 2013 2015

Pattern 1995 3.6918 2014 2015

Water quality 1995 3.3666 2014 2015

Park 1995 7.2528 2014 2016

Urban green infrastructure 1995 3.9008 2015 2019

Restoration 1995 5.9485 2015 2016

Green roof 1995 4.8968 2016 2019

Source: Authors.

4.2. Analysis of the green infrastructure research trend

Keywords were selected from the titles, abstracts, and texts of the papers. High-
frequency keywords can reflect the popular research fields (Li, 2010). Investigating
the centrality and mutation of keywords in keyword co-occurrence analysis of
CiteSpace is significant to the analysis of research hotspots. VOSviewer can cluster
keywords with similar research topics into one class and mark them in the same
color. Different views can express diverse information. This study used CiteSpace and
VOSviewer to make the analysis results substantially comprehensive and reliable.

4.2.1. Analysis of research evolution

In CiteSpace, the visual map was generated with keywords as nodes, and the follow-
ing results can be obtained by using the burst function (Table 6). Based on the key-
words, the results were analyzed combined with the literature review. The study of
green infrastructure can be divided into the following stages.
(1) 2009–2012. In 2009, the burst word “sustainability” appeared, and the study
mainly explored sustainable development. In 2010, the burst words “urban area,”
“stormwater management,” and “ecological network” appeared. In 2011, the burst
words “energy” and “urban ecosystem” occurred. The research is in the stage of
“explosive exploration.” A series of problems brought by rapid urbanization has
become the bottleneck of urban sustainable development (Votinov et al., 2020), and
the “sustainable development concept” contained in green infrastructure has been
widely recognized. In 2009, the theme of the International Federation of Landscape
356 J. YING ET AL.

Table 7. Spatial scale of green infrastructure research based on the 865 scientific publications
analyzed in this paper.
No of academic
Spatial scale Constituent elements publications
Region/Macro-scale Green corridors, green patches, wildlife migration 217
corridors, green countryside
City/Meso-scale Green alley and street, public park, urban wetland, 355
urban forest, urban waterfront, urban greenway
Site/Micro-scale Rain garden, grass channel, retention ponds, permeable 293
pavement, ecological parking, green roof
Source: Authors.

Architects (IFLA) was “Green Infrastructure.” In the same year, the British Landscape
Design Association also issued a statement, emphasizing the benefits of “green infra-
structure” and its important role in coping with environmental challenges and the
important role of landscape architects (Zhang et al., 2009). Under such a social back-
ground, “green infrastructure” has been endowed with important social value.
(2) 2013–2014. In the transitional stage, the research on green infrastructure was
continuously developed and deepened. For example, the concept of green infrastruc-
ture has attracted continuous attention in the field of “landscape architecture” and
reflected in “park” design. The research on green infrastructure in the field of storm-
water management gradually developed into the stage of engineering measures, and
“permeable pavement” was thoroughly explored. Meanwhile, substantial focus was
attached to “water quality.”
(3) 2015–2019. Keywords in this stage included “urban green infrastructure,”
“restoration,” and “green roof.” In 2015, the 6th International Conference on
Restoration Ecology was held in Manchester, with the theme “Improving the Rapid
Restoration Ability of Ecosystem: Restoring Cities, Villages and Countryside (Peng &
Wu, 2015).” Roof greening and green building became emerging hot spots.
It can be seen from the evolution of the research that the practice of green infra-
structure has been widely applied in three scales: site, city and region. Through the
analysis of the literature abstracts, we found that there were 865 articles involved in
different research scales (Table 7). Site scale is the micro－scale of green infrastruc-
ture research, which refers to a kind of ecological cycle of stormwater control and
rainwater utilization facilities. The urban scale, as the meso－scale of green infrastruc-
ture, is essentially the natural system which can be relied upon to maintain the sus-
tainable development of urban environment. The city and its residents can get
natures services from it. Macro-scale regional green infrastructure refers to the nat-
ural continuous green network structure, which can maintain spatial stability, protect
species diversity and have overall ecological benefits. “Urban area,” “park,” and
“restoration” have considerably higher burst intensity than other keywords, thereby
indicating that urban ecological restoration is one of the core objectives of green
infrastructure research on city scale (Wu et al., 2019). Park planning design is an
important link in urban ecological restoration (Gu et al., 2008).

4.2.2. Analysis of main knowledge domains

The following figure is a cluster view with co-occurrence keywords as clustering units
in VOSviewer. The minimum display frequency of keywords is 5. The more obvious
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 357

Figure 6. Cluster view of the green infrastructure research.

Source: Authors.

the font (i.e. large font size and high opacity), the higher the frequency (Figure 6).
When the frequency of some keywords is above 5 times but in a lower state, they will
not be displayed clearly because of high opacity. In Figure 6, the keywords with simi-
lar topics are clustered into one category and represented by one color. The four core
clusters are as follows: red (green infrastructure and stormwater management), green
(green infrastructure and ecosystem services), blue (green infrastructure and biodiver-
sity protection), and yellow (green infrastructure and climate change) clusters.
(1) Green infrastructure and stormwater management. This cluster has the highest
number of keywords and an important direction of the green infrastructure research.
Traditional rainwater management aims to realize the rapid discharge of urban rain-
water runoff, and the main carrier is an urban rainwater pipe system (gray infrastruc-
ture). With the rapid development of urbanization, building density gradually
increases, the area of impervious pavement expands, and the natural storage and
drainage system and hydrological cycle have been substantially damaged. Traditional
stormwater management mode separates the relationship between human and nature,
and its drawbacks are constantly exposed. In this case, an increasing number of cities
begin to combine traditional stormwater pipe network with new green infrastructure,
and explore multifunctional and sustainable stormwater management modes (Zhang
& Chui, 2019), which are represented by “low-impact development,” “water sensitive
urban design,” and “sponge city,” among others. These modes attach importance to
358 J. YING ET AL.

the application of “green elements” in stormwater management, such as “green roofs,”

“rain gardens,” and “wetlands.”
“Low-impact development” originated in the US. It was originally intended to
compensate for the economic and environmental limitations of traditional rainwater
management measures through plant retention and absorption of infiltration rain-
water (Luo & Li, 2014). This type of development’s basic idea is to use small-scale
and low-cost green ecological technologies, and reduce runoff and water discharge via
infiltration, filtration, evaporation, and flood detention to realize effective hydrological
design (Bhatt et al., 2019). Such measures as “bioretention,” “green roofs,” and
“permeable pavement” are taken to simulate the hydrological process of nature. The
idea is to make the hydrological function of an urban development area to be as close
as possible to the natural state.
“Water sensitive urban design” originated in Australia, and combines the entire
hydrological cycle with urban development and construction to minimize the negative
influence of urban development on the hydrological environment (Castonguay et al.,
2018; Morison & Brown, 2011). This design emphasizes the combination of the best
planning practice and management practice, and can be applied in urban districts,
blocks, and even plots (Romnee et al., 2015). Best planning practice refers to site
assessment and land use planning. Given that land use planning has an impact on
sites (e.g. drainage mode and water quality), impact assessment is of immense
importance. Best management practice is generally divided into engineering and non-
engineering practices (Wang, 2016), with emphasis on leadership and knowledge
management development in the latter ones (Jankurova et al., 2017; Mishchuk et al.,
2016; Po or et al., 2018). The principle of engineering is similar to that of low-impact
development, whereas non-engineering means to achieve the goal of stormwater man-
agement through non-technical means, such as management, system, or education.
The concept of “sponge city” was proposed under the background of increasingly
severe stormwater disasters in China, combined with the excellent experience of other
countries and existing technical foundation of stormwater management in China (Shi,
2018). The metaphor of “sponge” for stormwater management reflects the concept of
stormwater management that respects and conforms to nature. Sponge city construc-
tion includes three directions: protection, restoration, and development. Protection
refers to protecting the ecosystem that has not been destroyed. Restoration indicates
restoring the damaged natural environment via human intervention. Development
means the construction of ecological environment (urban ecological environment)
(Han & Zhao, 2016).
(2) Green infrastructure and urban ecosystem services. Keyword density in a clus-
ter should be analyzed. Figure 6 shows two evident small clusters. One cluster com-
prises the keywords “ecosystem services” and “cities.” The research on ecosystem
services appears frequently in highly cited literature, thereby demonstrating the view-
point that “highly cited literature lay a knowledge foundation for research hotspots.”
The research on “green infrastructure” is closely related to the research on “ecosystem
services,” both of which are broad and highly comprehensive concepts. The relevant
studies have mainly focused on “cities” and analyzed the issues closely related to
human health and environment protection.
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 359

Table 8. Key gaps on green infrastructure research and provide suggestions for future research.
Focus areas Research gaps Future research
Publication The GI research literature was mostly from It is necessary to study in these developing
performance highly developed countries, except China. regions. They are currently experiencing a
rapid urbanization process, which is
related to the severe ecological
environment crisis in
developing countries.
Disciplinary The understanding of GI concept in different Interdisciplinary research needs to be
distribution academic disciplines leads to the diversity considered to form a recognized
and ambiguousness of GI definition of green infrastructure.
conceptualization.
Type of functions There are many GI studies that consider More thorough and extensive economic
environmental and social functions, but function studies of GI are needed.
the economic valuation practices at GI
are rare.
Spatial scale A strong focus on city scale, a clear research In-depth study on the multi-functional green
emphasis on ecosystem services and a infrastructure in urban sustainable
limited emphasis on the social, economic development.
aspects of GI.
Source: Authors.

(3) Green infrastructure and biodiversity protection. This selected the following
representative keywords from the keywords with the highest frequency:
“management,” “biodiversity,” “GIS,” “land-use,” “connectivity,” “ecological network,”
“fragment,” and “corridors.” By analyzing the keywords, the following conclusions
were drawn. (1) One of the important development goals of green infrastructure is to
protect biodiversity (Savas et al., 2016). (2) Spatial analysis of species via GIS technol-
ogy is significant to land use and habitat protection. (3) Green infrastructure is an
interconnecting green space network, which consists of hubs and links. The restor-
ation of “fragmentation” in ecological environment in the construction of green infra-
structure is a critical and arduous task (Zhou & Yin, 2010).
(4) Green infrastructure and climate change. The keywords in this cluster are div-
ided into three clusters. From the perspectives of location and content, the keywords
in the cluster closely related to the theme word “green infrastructure” include
“vegetation,” “ecosystem,” and “landscape architecture.” This cluster is broad and
closely related to gardens. With this cluster as a starting point, two other clusters
have been developed. One cluster studies how green infrastructure can alleviate cli-
mate problems, such as “urban heat island effect” and “air pollution.” The other clus-
ter is specific engineering measures, such as “green roofs,” “green walls,” and
“green buildings.”

5. Discussion
This study used CiteSpace and VOSviewer to analyze and interpret 2194 studies on
green infrastructure collected in the WOS database from 1995 to 2019 from the
aspects of issuing countries and institutions, highly cited journals and literature, dis-
cipline distribution, research evolution and keyword clustering. In what follows, we
discuss our key gaps on green infrastructure research and provide suggestions for
future research (Table 8).
360 J. YING ET AL.

In this study, the performance of publications was quantitatively analyzed based

on bibliometric methods, and it was found that the US ranks first in terms of the
number of publications and publishing organizations, followed by the UK, Italy, and
Sweden in Europe. With the exception of China, there are few studies in Africa, Asia
and South America, which may limit the universality of the green infrastructure find-
ings. Therefore, it is necessary to study in these developing regions. They are cur-
rently experiencing a rapid urbanization process, which is related to the severe
ecological environment crisis in developing countries. Moreover, green infrastructure
research remains in its initial stage, and green infrastructure practice has considerable
demands. In the future, numerous researches on green infrastructure will be con-
ducted in the developing regions, and these countries and regions will also provide a
broad practical space for green infrastructure development.
From the disciplinary distribution of green infrastructure research, its concept
comes from different disciplines, such as environmental ecology, regional & urban
planning, and engineering. Therefore, green infrastructure involves a wide range of
ecosystems and targets, and has been adopted in various disciplines related to design,
protection, and planning. However, no recognized definition and evaluation standard
of green infrastructure is provided in the existing literature. The understanding of
green infrastructure in various disciplines based on the corresponding research back-
ground makes the conceptualization, thereby weakening the effectiveness and multi-
function of green infrastructure. The definition of green infrastructure is the basis of
scientific research and planning strategy and has important authority. The clear defin-
ition and evaluation criteria of green infrastructure are conducive to in-depth and
comprehensive interdisciplinary research on the basis of unified understanding.
Therefore, interdisciplinary research needs to be considered to form a recognized def-
inition of green infrastructure.
Green infrastructure can provide environmental, economic and social benefits sim-
ultaneously. According to the high- frequency keyword analysis and keyword cluster
analysis in the previous sections, there are many studies that consider environmental
and social benefits, as well as the valuation is often defined in biogeophysical terms.
Although it is widely recognized that green infrastructures can influence several eco-
nomic outcomes (De Groot et al., 2010; Kim & Song, 2019; Van Oijstaeijen et al.,
2020), the absence of co-occurring keywords and clustering information related to
economic benefit, indicates a lack of economic related research. A systematic review
found that the economic valuation practices at green infrastructure are rare, leading
to uncertainty of economic benefit and impact (Van Oijstaeijen et al., 2020). Our
results confirmed this opinion from a scientific and quantitative perspective. In prac-
tice, comparing alternatives between green or grey infrastructures is often based on
their relative economic benefits. However, there are no extensive scientific researches
about these issues, and more thorough and extensive studies are needed to fill this
gap. In particular, a comprehensive green infrastructure assessment could guide pol-
icy makers in this area (Turturean et al., 2019).
By analyzing the research hotspots, even though the research and practice are
mainly concentrated in the region scale, city scale and site scale, we observed a clear
focus on urban areas, a clear emphasis on ecosystem services and a limited emphasis
 ECONOMIC RESEARCH-EKONOMSKA ISTRAŽIVANJA 361

on the social, economic aspects of green infrastructure. Under the background of glo-
bal urbanization, and a series of environmental problems brought about by rapid
urbanization has become major challenges to urban sustainable development. Many
of them are caused by intensive migration (JeR drzejowska-Schiffauer & Schiffauer,
2017; Mishchuk et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2016a, 2016b), particularly due to reasons of
insufficient well-being in living environment (Bilan et al., 2020). In urban landscape
with dense population, satisfying multiple demands for ecology, society, and human
health is particularly urgent. In the future Green infrastructure research should be
highlighted in the ecological, social and economic effects of urbanization, giving full
play to the multi-function green infrastructure in dealing with the urban sustainable
development, such as alleviating urban environmental problems (Lu et al. 2019),
improving residents’ living standards, and enhancing urban resilience.

6. Conclusion
This study conducted an in-depth analysis of green infrastructure research from dif-
ferent perspectives, expecting to explore the evolution of green infrastructure in verti-
cal development trend and provide a reference for green infrastructure research. This
study also has some shortcomings. On the one hand, only the core data set of WOS
was selected, and some research results may be omitted. On the other hand, although
the theme context, knowledge evolution, and research hotspots were comprehensively
discussed, this study failed to thoroughly analyze the contents of interdisciplinary
because green infrastructure is a typical complex system involving different disci-
plines. This aspect will be the promotion and development direction in the follow-
up research.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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