A bottom-up perspective on green infrastructure in informal settlements: Understanding nature's benefits through lived experiences

Twenty per cent of the world's urban population lives in inadequate housing, including informal settlements (IS). This population often experience a low quality of life and faces multiple environmental challenges heightened by climate change, such as air pollution, flooding, and drought. While there is extensive academic literature substantiating the potential of enhancing green infrastructure (GI) as an effective approach to manage environmental risks, it is often overlooked as an academic focus in the analysis of development issues in informal settlements. Similarly, GI is neglected as an effective environmental approach and planning response in this context often due to a lack of clear understanding of its benefits. This perspective leads to considering GI as a luxury rather than essential in IS. To address this gap in the literature and by considering the socio-cultural importance of green infrastructure, this paper attempts to provide a bottom-up perspective on GI and the ecosystem services (ESS) it supplies for the residents of IS. To do so, two IS in Tehran metropolitan area, Iran, have been studied. Through semi-structured interviews, residents’ conceptions of ESS provided by GI were explored to identify the in/significance of GI in their daily life. The results show that residents' lived experiences provided them with a profound understanding of the benefits of nature and GI. Through analysing residents’ experiences, this research describes the socio-cultural bonds, environmental benefits, and economic reliance between residents and their surrounding environment. This paper demonstrates that the GI provides valuable and yet substantially different ESS for residents of IS compared to how the concept is conventionally conceived in the global North. The paper argues for necessity of GI in IS as it provides environmental comfort, hazards mitigation, and economic support while having cultural values. Therefore, understanding their lifestyle, relationship with surrounding nature and sociocultural considerations is both effective and necessary in discussing GI in informal settlements.