Green Infrastructure and Its Place in Urban Environment: Opinion Polls

Livability is rather controversial term, to refer to the quality of environment for a full and healthy life. Subjective feelings and objective values determine a level of living quality. Environmental, social and economic factors of sustainable development triad may be evaluated on the basis of public polls, expert evaluations, mathematical modelling. A questionnaire consisting of 23 urban livability factors was used through 5-point scale (not important at all-very important). 6 of them represent environmental elements (noise and air pollution, protected areas expansion, control of environmental violations, design of parks and public spaces and their quality). According to poll of 302 Moscow and Saint-Petersburg citizens, environmental factors are less important, than economic and cultural ones. The most crucial factors of urban livability are: income rise, quality of healthcare and education, jobs creation, housing quality and security improvement. Moreover, citizens are more interested in cultural landscapes with forest plantations, than natural biotopes preserved in these cities yet. This fact does not correspond to actual value of ecosystem services. Some disparity between perceptions of different respondents’ groups was revealed, but the place of residence was identified as the most important reason, why city dwellers prefer some of environmental problems to be solved. Citizens living in areas of accordance with ANG standards of green infrastructure availability tend to be less interested in an array of environmental factors. It seems essential to continue such polls for citizens of developing and developed countries to reveal opinion’s differences and to plan for improvement of urban environment.