Assessing green infrastructure spatial plans in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Green infrastructure (GI) is a strategically planned network of natural and seminatural areas designed and managed to deliver ecosystem services. This paper aims to improve knowledge about how spatial plans address GI in Ethiopia. Document review and content analysis were used to identify and analyze key principles of GI planning and green space plans. The paper uses two evaluation criteria: an assessment of GI integration into the strategic planning of urban regions and criterions developed to evaluate the green plan in towns and cities to measure their integration into urban spatial and green space plans. The results indicate that green infrastructure has been at the initial stage of planning and there are gaps in the way spatial planning incorporates GI concepts, components, functions, and principles. Reviewing and analyzing whether planning documents incorporate GI principles and green plans is relevant to explaining the role of spatial plans in delivering GI. The plan evaluation in this research can be implemented at any planning scale in Ethiopia and other African urban areas. Applying these UGI principles in the plan can guide for future development of UGI planning efforts.