Planning and Human Geography Seminar 18 November - Violeta Berdejo-Espinola

Changes in green space use during the COVID-19 lockdown in Brisbane. 

Abstract

Green spaces are important features of the urban fabric. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mobility restrictions altered temporal and spatial patterns of green space use. This presentation highlights the power of integrating social and environmental for informing resilient urban planning and design. This interdisciplinary research brings together survey data collected during Brisbane’s first COVID-19 lockdown and open-access green space spatial data to provide a better understanding of individual preferences and needs for urban natureduring stressful times. The findings provide insights into green space ecological structural characteristics that can fulfill a wide range of physical and psychological needs during times of crises and beyond. 

Biography 

Violeta is a PhD candidate in the School of the Environment at The University of Queensland. Her interdisciplinary research explores the ecology of cities pursuing questions around the ways humans can access, and benefit from nature considering the current pressures of rapid urbanisation and other global changes. Violeta is particularly interested in understanding similarities and differences in access to and perceptions of nature experiences in countries across the world, and the implications of urban nature accessibility on human health and wellbeing taking into account a range of urban contexts. Specifically, her PhD explores the global spatial distribution of urban nature complemented by local assessments that look at factors affecting human-nature interactions in cities with different structural and socioeconomic characteristics.