DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.05.008

Summary
This article discusses the importance of incorporating robust planning for green infrastructure in rapidly changing Southern African cities. It emphasizes the need to recognize and value ecosystem services in public planning and decision-making processes, and highlights the costs of not investing in green infrastructure. By combining perspectives on social-ecological resilience and urban infrastructure transitions, the article demonstrates how green infrastructure can serve as an innovative solution to address challenges faced by urban environments.

The article uses a Johannesburg case study to illustrate how various ecosystem services can contribute to the resilience of the city. However, it notes that despite the importance of these services, they are often overlooked in planning processes due to ongoing service delivery protests in many South African cities.

The article provides three key conclusions. First, a comprehensive understanding of green infrastructure requires a combination of social-ecological system thinking and infrastructure transition scholarship. Second, there is a lack of knowledge regarding ecosystem services in Johannesburg, and planning to facilitate their valuation is inadequate. Third, addressing this issue necessitates ecosystem valuations tailored to the unique conditions of developing world cities like Johannesburg.

Overall, the article highlights the crucial role of green infrastructure in creating resilient urban environments and emphasizes the need for more comprehensive planning processes that consider ecosystem services and their value to communities.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This paper uses a system thinking approach to evaluate the urban green system's ecosystem services in fast-changing Southern African cities.
Using a case study of the city of Johannesburg, the paper shows a lack of knowledge around ecosystem services and their underestimation in municipality planning.
The paper uses a quantitative approach to quantify two ecosystem services provided by Johannesburg's green infrastructure. The carbon stock is used for the evaluation of climate-regulating service. Simultaneously, the new employees in green spaces and green services are used as an index for evaluating cultural services. Furthermore, the paper uses a qualitative approach (semi-structured interviews) to analyze if there are integrated green infrastructure in service delivery objectives. As in the build-up to the 2010 Soccer World Cup in Johannesburg, the paper reports there has been an extremely positive rollout of greening projects. At the same time, the main projects' logic was to plant as many trees as possible in the shortest timeframe to be appearing to address the disparity between so-called leafy green suburbs and dusty townships. This was not necessarily bad, but there were clearly missed opportunities as an evaluation on which plants enhance selected ecosystem services, who to involve in the management of the new greenery, and how to do this.
The paper describes the city as a socio-ecological system. It shows how its resilience thus relates to the mutual adaptability of social and ecological systems, which determines the ability of a complex system to absorb disturbance and re-organize in the face of pressures. Particularly, the paper shows as urban green systems need to be conceived as green infrastructure in the same way as other built infrastructures to be designed and developed to function as a whole, rather than as a set of separate unrelated parts.

Point of Strength
This paper shows as in developing countries, efforts are focused on grey infrastructure development, but often neglected consideration is how green infrastructure can function as an augmentation, or even an alternative, to grey infrastructures, dramatically improving cost efficiency and effectiveness in over-stressed systems (for example, the use of green spaces to improve stormwater management in urban contexts). The paper compares flexible green infrastructure with grey infrastructures, showing the importance of studies analyzing their complementarity and mutual benefit in co-planning.
Due to these system-wide benefits, the strategic placement of green infrastructure in urban planning can assist in creating more flexible urban infrastructure, capable of adapting to change, in contrast to fixed grey infrastructure, which essentially remains dormant unless
its specific service is required.
The paper evaluates Johannesburg's green infrastructures using a quantitative method to evaluate two ecosystem services and a qualitative method to assess the lack of a complex system approach. The general implication of this paper is for an urban resilience discourse rooted in robust empirical assessments on the nature, composition, and distribution of urban green networks.