Integrate brownfield greening into urban planning: A review from the perspective of ecosystem services

Brownfield greening (BG) is increasingly recognized as an important tool for improving the quality of life and urban sustainability in urban planning, yet our understanding of this topic remains limited. This paper aims to advance the state of knowledge of BG from the ecosystem services (ES) perspective and synthesize key findings to provide implications for integrating BG into urban planning. To achieve this aim, we conducted a systematic literature review of 58 papers, analyzing 1) general information, 2) ES provided by BG, 3) brownfield characteristics, and 4) targeted green spaces. Our findings indicate that BG has been garnering increasing attention in the academic field in recent years and showing a deeper integration with the ES concept, while most studies focused on developed countries rather than developing ones. Habitat and recreational services emerged as the most extensively discussed ES among the various identified ES. While some relationships were identified between brownfield characteristics and the delivery of ES, little research has directly investigated this connection and most studies lacked sufficient information on brownfield characteristics. The five main types of transformed green spaces identified in current research are general 'green space,' 'vegetated brownfield,' 'park,' 'woodland and forest,' and 'protected area'. For integrating BG into urban planning, we found that BG holds potential as a nature-based solution (NBS) towards multiple urban challenges and suggests applying comprehensive, dynamic management, planning and design tools to achieve sustainable BG in the future.