Page - 441 - in Biodiversity and Health in the Face of Climate Change

441 according to health scientists, one of the most important aspects of health promotion in settlement areas (Rittel et  al. 2016, p.  59; Ward Thompson 2013). The journey to work, to school, going shopping, etc. should be covered as much as possible -  not by car  - but on foot or by bike. Special attention to this issue is paid in the next section. 19.6 Greenways for  Sustainable and  Healthy Mobility in  Daily Life To allow for daily active travel by people, attractive, safe and largely noise-free con- nectivity of routes in green spaces are an important precondition (Greenspace Scotland 2008). Accordingly ‘green connections’ for cyclists and pedestrians should be created between residential areas and highly frequented places such as commu- nity and shopping centres, schools, kindergartens and areas with a high density of work places. To implement such a network of greenways for everyday physical activity and mobility, pre-existing green spaces could build the backbone, supple- mented by newly planned routes, but especially by linear green structures, such as clearly demarcated pedestrian and cycle paths safe from motorised traffic and accompanied by tree avenues, hedgerows and other appropriate linear green ele- ments. An overlap with parts of a habitat network or land within a green belt is pos- sible, but conflicts should be avoided or at least minimised. Seen from a landscape planning perspective, this would ideally result in a city-wide network of green infra- structure, consisting of multi-functional green spaces with high amenity values and linear, but ‘green’, path connections. Such a network could contribute to the reduc- tion of car traffic, thereby reducing noise, accidents and air pollution, and in this way would also improve healthy environmental conditions. How such an approach could be pursued in (landscape) planning has been shown by Bloß (2016) in the example of the city of Oranienburg, a medium-sized munici- pality with about 42.000 inhabitants, located ca. 20  km north of Berlin. In order to identify suitable routes in an area of limited available space, Bloß made use of the GIS-based least-cost path (LCP) model (see Conine et  al. 2004; Teng et  al. 2011) for greenway alignment purposes. The LCP combines a land suitability assessment with an algorithm in order to identify the most suitable routes. Simplifying the working procedure somewhat, the following main steps were taken: 1. Identification of demand areas. Residential areas and highly frequented urban centres were identified as areas with a high demand for interconnection by gre- enways. These ‘demand areas’ were used to determine start and destination points for greenways (see Fig.  19.1). 2. Suitability assessment. The suitability of different areas for being a part of the greenway network was assessed  using five criteria: land availability, road types, attractiveness, demand for connectivity and protection status (nature conserva- tion). For each of these, all spatial features were categorised into levels of suit- 19 Linking Landscape Planning and  Health