We inhabit an increasingly urbanized world. By 2050, 68% of the world's population is projected to live in cities, a figure that Latin America has already surpassed with over 80% of its inhabitants currently in urban zones [United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), 2018]. In response to the expansion and densification of cities, there has been increased recognition of the need to ensure continued and equitable access to urban green spaces, something that cannot be guaranteed without extensive urban planning, investment, and a focus on long-term management (Ferguson et al., 2018, p. 136; Vásquez, 2016, p. 70). In recent years, Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) has emerged as a way to conceptualize the system of green spaces in urbanized areas and has achieved high visibility as a key strategy for increasing the sustainability and resilience of cities (Davies et al., 2015; Davies and Lafortezza, 2017; Badiu et al., 2019). Alongside the more general term “Green Infrastructure,” UGI has been subject to different applications and diverse definitions, as a result of which there has been a concerted effort to map and consolidate usage of the term in previous years (Wang and Banzhaf, 2018; Badiu et al., 2019; Seiwert and Rößler, 2020). According to these reviews, multifunctionality and connectivity can be understood as the main characteristics associated with the concept. Therefore, UGI can be broadly defined as the network of natural, seminatural, and artificial green spaces within, around, and between urban areas, the infrastructural element of which provides a more utilitarian approach than that of “green spaces” or “urban greening” (Benedict and McMahon, 2002, p. 12; Diep et al., 2019, p. 555; Tzoulas et al., 2007, p. 169). The concept can refer to the network as a whole or its individual components such as parks, gardens, cemeteries, and urban forests and agriculture.

A significant quantity of the literature on UGI over the past two decades has focused on the ecosystem services that UGI provides, which range from environmental benefits including temperature regulation (Ballinas and Barradas, 2016; Tan et al., 2016), pollution mitigation (Vásquez et al., 2019), and water management (Ahern, 2007; Yang and Li, 2013) to social and health benefits (de Vries et al., 2003; Tzoulas et al., 2007). Some authors have also highlighted the impact that UGI can have on property values and energy costs (Chelleri et al., 2016, p. 278; Kim and Coseo, 2018). However, the practical origins of the term and its prevalent use as a concept in urban planning by local authorities have recently led to its intersection with analysis of management practices by a range of actors and, more recently the concept of governance as it pertains to management. Governance can be defined as the constellation of stakeholders, institutions, rules, and processes of collective decision-making that allows stakeholders to influence and coordinate their needs (Lemos and Agrawal, 2006). However, UGI governance has little consensus with regards to its definition (Dempsey and Burton, 2012), and what is more, the relationship between the concepts of management and governance lacks clarity and has been subject to conflicting or even opposing definitions (Jansson et al., 2019, p. 954).

Generally, in the literature pertaining to UGI management, governance encompasses the involvement of a diverse range of actors in decision-making processes, highlighting participatory practices, and “bottom–up” initiatives from citizens and civil society that are generally positioned at the opposite end of the spectrum to traditional, centralized, “top–down” government management. To this end, a number of authors across Europe acknowledge a shift “from government to governance” in the management of UGI or a “communicative turn” (Buizer et al., 2015, p. 8; Fox-Kämper et al., 2018, p. 59; Mattijssen et al., 2017a, p. 96; van der Jagt et al., 2016, p. 12). An increasing engagement of citizens in green spaces governance has been noted, where self-governance initiatives in Europe exhibit a large diversity of practices and are seen as a broad phenomenon (Mattijssen et al., 2017a). In practice, however, governments still play an important role in the management and planning of (large) green spaces (Mattijssen et al., 2015). The motivation behind the shift from government to governance has been attributed to a range of factors; Torres-Lima et al. (2018) speak of it “as a way to overcome conflicts among natural resource and development priorities” that arise within rapidly urbanizing environments “in order to improve resilience” (p. 45). The application of this concept to UGI has also been motivated by the need to address some of the primary issues produced by productivity-driven neoliberal practices and to move UGI management toward decisions made in the collective interest (Flores-Xolocotzi, 2012, p. 177).

In general, far less emphasis has been placed in both policy and literature on the management and long-term maintenance of UGI than on its design and implementation (Mattijssen et al., 2017b), and, in particular, influential research on the management of UGI has been geographically concentrated in the Global North. For example, the systematic literature review by Boulton et al. (2018) of urban greenspace provision found that 88% of articles were focused on Europe, Asia, and North America (p. 86), reflecting findings in the area of urban ecosystem services (Haase et al., 2014, Dobbs et al., 2019). In Latin America, the concept of governance within UGI management is of particular importance. “Good governance,” meaning the facilitation of participation through the strengthening of legal regimes, has been pushed by the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Inter-American Development Bank in previous years as a means to improve the effectiveness of international aid and investment (Zurbriggen, 2011). On the whole, however, the definition of key concepts, linkages, and large-scale case studies have primarily come from European authors and institutions (Zurbriggen, 2011, p. 41), and there is little knowledge with regards to if research and practice in Latin America is following patterns and trends in the Global North.

The Latin American context provides challenges and shapes priorities for environmental management, factors that include rapid urbanization, extreme privatization, high socio-spatial inequality, water scarcity, and lack of adequate waste disposal facilities (Heinreichs et al., 2009; Zurbriggen, 2011; Millington, 2018; Dobbs et al., 2019; Vásquez et al., 2019). These contextual factors provide contrast to some areas of the Global North but alignment with other areas in the Global South. The pressure of development, for example, and the way this manifests in urban management is a factor that also needs to be considered for Sub-Saharan Africa (du Toit et al., 2018). Opportunities can also arise from shifting landscapes and pressures that are not present in Europe or North America (Lindley et al., 2018, p. 329). Despite the importance and applicability of Latin American research for UGI management, common pitfalls and shared challenges, if being researched, lack visibility due to linguistic barriers including English language bias and are not easily accessible.

In summary, there are a number of comprehensive quantitative and qualitative reviews on UGI, especially with regards to the provision of ecosystem services (Tzoulas et al., 2007; Haase et al., 2014; Molla, 2014; du Toit et al., 2018). On the contrary, comprehensive reviews of UGI management are still rare and much needed at a global scale and especially within the Global South regions. Governance, as it pertains to UGI management, has been researched far less in Latin America, despite being one of the most urbanized regions in the planet and a biodiversity hotspot (Heinreichs et al., 2009; Zurbriggen, 2011, p. 41; Vásquez et al., 2019). In this paper, we address this gap by conducting a systematic review of UGI management in Latin America to provide a baseline for a better understanding of research in the region based on a systematic review of the academic literature. This study addresses the following research questions: What are the research trends in terms of topics and case studies that characterize UGI management research in Latin America? Which types of management are the focuses of this research? A trilingual systematic review was conducted across three major academic databases. This review was positioned so as to also include all literature pertaining to both traditional, government-led management, and, in addition, those publications that focused on the governance of UGI networks and components by actors external to the state in order to best assess trends and avoid subjectivity in exclusion. Once identified, a quantitative analysis of the academic literature was used to identify trends and characteristics, followed by a deeper, qualitative analysis highlighting the key learnings provided by these publications. We hope, through this combined approach, not only to draw attention to the body of Latin American literature in this field but also to highlight the contributions brought by the study of UGI management in rapidly urbanizing regions.

With an aim to fill the knowledge gap around UGI management publications in Latin America, this study has centered on the research questions: What are the research trends in terms of topics and case studies that characterize UGI management research in Latin America? Which management types are the focuses of this research? An extensive trilingual systematic review was conducted using a wide range of search terms, and 47 publications were identified and subjected to both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The research that was found was predominantly recent, and the temporal trends identified were more pronounced than those seen by Boulton et al. (2018), in a review of research on global greenspace provision, and Ordóñez-Barona et al. (2020) on urban forestry research in Latin America: over 80% of the studies were published between January 2010 and May 2020. Aligning with expectations based on population size, Mexico and Brazil were the principal areas of study for almost 50% of the publications and were the largest producers of research within the region. The fact that over a quarter of the work found originated from lead authors based outside of Latin America likely reflects either high external interest in the region, low regional interest in this topic, or bias from the databases used.

A true picture of UGI management in practice is likely to extend beyond what was observed within the academic literature, but the trends identified provide an interesting reflection of academic priorities and visibility of respective management practices in Latin America. The fact that local government was the principal actor for the management of the UGI studied in over half of the total research found reflects the European literature (van der Jagt et al., 2016); this was followed by local communities at just over 20%. While government-led and self-governance initiatives had a fairly consistent temporal distribution, co-governance initiatives were recent, appearing only from 2014, and were the focus of a comparatively small proportion of the research. The transition from “government to governance” has been frequently cited in European publications (Buizer et al., 2015, p. 8; van der Jagt et al., 2016, p. 12; Mattijssen et al., 2017a, p. 96; Fox-Kämper et al., 2018, p. 59), but a movement from traditional government-led management to empowered self-governance initiatives was not apparent in the publications found. The results of the qualitative review aligned with this: community initiatives were described as having an established presence and history within the region, but governmental-led and self-governance practices tended to be siloed, leading to a lack of coordination and, in some cases, competition between management practices. Counterintuitively, it may be that a strengthening of local government is needed in order to allow for the types of cooperative and communicative management practices that are present in governance publications from other parts of the world. There was a notable absence of “market-led” initiatives in the research identified, which was at odds with expectations within the literature and high levels of privatization within the region (Vásquez et al., 2016).

Notable research trends within the publications related to weak local governance, informal settlements, marked socioeconomic inequalities, and conflicts with traditional indigenous practices. These are not challenges that have substantial representation in the international literature but are clearly applicable across Latin America and possibly in other countries within the Global South. Indigenous practices, although they fall under the category of self-governance initiatives, clash with the very concept of governance in their intent, history, and discourses used (Pabello and Nasupcialy, 2019). The juxtaposition between the idea of UGI as the primary motivator for a self-governance initiative and the conception of cooperative management and way of life as a means in itself raises the interesting question of how to integrate western management concepts with practices that predate colonialism in Latin America. It can be hoped that with the demonstrated acceleration of governance research in the countries studied, new knowledge and conceptual research can bridge these gaps and result in improved practices for UGI management.

The frequent presence of food security as both a benefit and a factor for success within UGI management was aligned with North American literature and practice in the area of community initiatives (Wekerle, 2004; Rosol, 2012). This tended to emerge out of necessity as opposed to food justice “movements,” reinforcing the notion that community initiatives are often the product of an obligation to fill the gaps left by inadequate state provision. The focus on the post-conflict benefits of successful and supported self-governance in Colombia in (Nail and Erazo, 2018) was interesting, as it presented an example of one of the ways in which both UGI and governance practices impact upon social capital in a way that has a direct benefit on fragmented societies and cities. Although benefits provided by successful initiatives were clearly mentioned, the factors needed for this success in the case of co-governance and self-governance initiatives, such as formal recognition and funding, were scarcely addressed. It would therefore be interesting to see future studies in the region that look to the similarities and differences in challenges faced at the community level with those initiatives in Europe and North America.

A mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology was employed for this review in order not only to view the characteristics, patterns, and trends of research for UGI management in Latin America more broadly but also the key learnings of the research content. In the focus on management type and actors involved, the results of the qualitative section corroborated that of the quantitative analysis. On reflection, however, a greater qualitative focus on the contextual factors affecting UGI management, aligned to the economic and political regimes of the countries in which the initiatives are situated, would have perhaps gone further to explain whether the geographical concentration of the research was connected to the desirability and feasibility of certain practices. This review was restricted to the literature present in Scopus, Web of Science, and SciELO. The former two have a strong bias toward English language journals and are the larger of the three databases searched. Despite this, the fact that over 40% of the articles were not in English indicates the body of research in this field in Spanish and Portuguese and the benefits of conducting a trilingual review. These databases were chosen, as it was possible to replicate the same searches across them, in terms of fields searched and Boolean strings used, but it is likely that this review does not exhaustively cover publications on this topic in the region. More research would likely be identified by measures such as using additional regional databases or conducting a bibliographic reference search of the research found. One of the articles identified made reference to a large number of undergraduate, masters, and doctorate level research papers within the area of Urban Forestry in Brazil that have not been published within scientific journals (Vieira and Panagopoulos, 2020, p. 9), and this is a claim that aligns with our anecdotal experience within the area of UGI management. Despite the challenges of conducting an extensive search of research within universities in the region, a review including thesis papers and gray literature more broadly, such as policy papers and municipal plans, would provide a more accurate picture of management for UGI in Latin America in practice.

In conclusion, this review has presented 47 publications that center on UGI management in Latin America and in doing so has also looked to achieve a better understanding of investigations in the region. This is the first systematic review of UGI management research in Latin America, to our knowledge. Considering the breadth of the search terms used and the minimal exclusion criteria, there is a shortage of research, particularly in the areas of cogovernance, market-led practice, and self-governance. The evident asymmetries between this region and Europe and North America, where much of the literature on green space provision is originating, indicate that there is much that the Latin American experience can offer that would also assist in research in other areas of the Global South. Echoing calls from Ordóñez-Barona et al. (2020), there is a need for funding that will allow more transnational and regional cooperation in order to better recognize the unique political and economic contexts within Latin America and the variation that this brings. In general, the “good governance” mechanisms promoted by multilateral organizations have ignored the complex differences between and challenges faced by countries in Latin America (Zurbriggen, 2011), and the lack of “context-sensitive” approaches was noted in the literature with reference to informal settlements (Diep et al., 2019, p. 566). Interesting areas for further research could look to answer how clear socioeconomic inequalities and socio-spatial segregation in Latin American cities affect management of UGI, how differences in economic and political regimes impact the introduction of governance practices, or to look more comparatively at the differences between research priorities in this region and the European and North American contexts. With reference to the challenges of applying western concepts to the Latin American context, one can also hope to see new conceptual frameworks emerging in the coming years that center on traditional and indigenous cooperative practices, emphasizing the centrality of cultural, social, and spiritual motivators for community management of UGI.

All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/Supplementary Material.

AV and EG conceived the study. AB executed the methodology, wrote the first drafts, and the final manuscript. AV and EG conducted the revision. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript and contributed to the study design and methodology.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.