Water valued in green infrastructure designs and human behaviours: Ecocentric values and their acceptance by human beings

Abstract

Designers are anthropocentric in their processes and final products; green infrastructure in cities expresses people’s relationship to the environment in terms of resource management primarily. The natural world is transformed into urban green arrangement for the economic and cultural benefit of humans. Most experts believe that by offering people the opportunity to participate in running and preserving certain ecosystems could have a very positive impact to human health and wellbeing. Environmental psychology suggests that we can provoke heightened experiences in people’s minds by designing dynamic flowing water patterns and deep ponds. Designed landscapes have always blended with built manmade environment in a dynamic way. Natural and artificial landscapes interweave with built marvels of human creativity; historic places and urban areas develop and blend in harmony with natural habitat. Most historical cities emerged along water sources as dynamic ecosystems.  The authors of this paper discuss the importance of water changing culture and behaviours in both urban and rural areas with reference to some noteworthy case studies and instances across Europe and, in particular, in recent cases of renaturation of rivers.