About

Robert Ryan is a professor of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The page does not provide specific details about his research focus, background, or key contributions. Therefore, a detailed biography cannot be generated from the available information.

Research topics

• Engineering
• Ecology
• Geography
• Business
• Sociology
• Environmental science
• Environmental resource management
• Civil engineering
• Environmental protection
• Mathematics
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Agroforestry
• Socioeconomics
• Transport engineering
• Archaeology
• Environmental planning
• Biology
• Forestry

Selected publications

• “Sponge City” Viability: Perspectives from Practitioners and Domain Experts in China

  Land · 2026-03-18

  articleOpen access

  China’s “Sponge City” initiative, launched in 2014, is a transformative approach to urban stormwater management that aims to deliver multiple benefits through nature-based solutions. Despite its widespread adoption in China, questions remain regarding its long-term viability. Through a new conceptual framework, this study examines the viability of the Sponge City model by analyzing insights from 30 practitioners and domain experts working in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and field studies, it investigates how participants interpret the concept, integrate climate adaptation strategies, and assess effectiveness across six dimensions: governance, economy, environment, urban form, civic engagement, and human wellbeing. The findings reveal diverse perspectives shaped by local contexts, disciplinary backgrounds, and professional experiences. While participants expressed cautious optimism, they also identified persistent challenges, including funding constraints, fragmented planning processes, and insufficient public engagement. Climate adaptation emerged as a central concern, with mixed views on the initiative’s ability to address extreme weather events. Overall, the study suggests that the Sponge City model holds promise, but its viability depends on continued refinement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and adaptive governance tailored to local needs. This study offers insights to inform future practice and broaden global efforts in stormwater management and urban resilience.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Nursing Interventions to Reduce Health Risks from Climate Change Impact in Urban Areas: A Scoping Review

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2025-07-25 · 9 citations

  reviewOpen access

  In recent studies, public health has been considered a key stakeholder in climate mitigation and adaptation in cities since they are more exposed to the impact of climate change. Nurses represent a vast majority of public health professionals, playing a key role in health promotion that allows them to influence individuals, families, and communities in adopting healthier behaviours and decarbonized lifestyles. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to map the existing evidence on nursing interventions, which are being led or implemented to reduce the health risks related to climate change in urban areas. The present review follows the JBI methodological framework, including a search on PubMed, MEDLINE complete, CINAHL Complete, Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine), and RCAAP. Hand searched references were also considered, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies between January 2014 and October 2024, for a more contemporary perspective. A three-step search strategy and data extraction tool were used by two independent reviewers. Twenty-seven studies in English and Portuguese were eligible for inclusion, all targeting a population of professionals with nursing-related roles: two case studies, one Delphi panel, one descriptive study, one historical research paper, two using a methodological design format, four narrative reviews, one observational study, nine review articles, three scoping reviews, and three systematic reviews. Eight categories of nursing interventions that contribute to decarbonized lifestyles, reducing health risks in relation to climate change, were acknowledged. Nurses play a key role in empowering individuals, families, and communities, promoting climate awareness and literacy, supporting health policy change, advocating for the most vulnerable and engaging in environmental activism, using evidence-based research, and taking advantage of marketing strategies and social media.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• <i>Rethinking Urban Green Spaces</i>

  Landscape Journal · 2025-05-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Rethinking Urban Green Spaces. Cecil Konijnendijk. Rethinking Urban and Regional Studies series. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024. ![Figure][1]</img> Cecil Konijnendijk, a leader in urban forestry, has spent his career advocating for research in urban greening. The founding editor of the journal

  PublisherDOI

• Research in Landscape Architecture Design Firms

  Landscape Journal · 2023-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  <h3>Abstract</h3> Landscape architecture offices are increasingly being asked to justify design decisions through performance metrics. In response, research is increasing within professional offices. However, while the breadth of academic research has been well‐studied, little is known about research within the professional design office. To address this gap, interviews were conducted with research leaders and principals of U.S. landscape architectural firms that promoted research as part of their services. This pilot study explored the range of research conducted; motivations for engaging in research; and firms’ relationships to practice, research methods used, and perceptions of the research skills needed by employees. Examples of what constituted research in practice varied widely between interviewees and was more expansive than the traditional analytic, replicable research conducted in academia. The study found that firms had a range of organizational strategies, from research labs to non‐profits, internal grants, and informal projects. Firms engaged in research to have a creative outlet and to inform existing projects. Engaging in research helped firms promote innovation, leadership, and marketing. Research allowed practitioners to follow topics that they were passionate about beyond the constraints of project contracts, and generally research was funded through overhead. A surprising result was that firms engaged in research to recruit and retain employees and promote continuing education. Interviewees indicated that academic programs should teach research and critical thinking skills so that graduates are better trained in justifying design decisions. Practitioners perceived a mismatch between academic research and the profession’s project‐based knowledge needs, but they were receptive to collaborations with academics to address the challenging questions facing the profession. Future studies are needed to understand how practitioners and academics define research as a starting point for collaboration.

  PublisherDOI

• Sustaining Urban Forests in Post-Industrial Cities: Place Attachment, Ecology, and Stewardship Potential

  Journal of Catholic Education · 2023-07-27 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  People value urban green spaces for enjoying nature and socializing with friends, family, and other park users. However, overgrown urban forests without clear access points can be perceived as dark, dangerous, and wild places. As many cities experience reduced budgets, they struggle to maintain green spaces established in more prosperous times. We conducted a descriptive analysis of how constrained parks budgets and subsequent city decisions about maintenance are associated with patterns of forest use, place attachment, and social capital and their impacts on the potential for stewardship of forested parks. We selected Springfield, Massachusetts for our study because it is typical of former industrial cities with highly constrained budgets. We used both qualitative and quantitative analyses of field observations and interviews with park users and nearby residents. We found that access to forests and park use were the strongest predictors of place attachment, and that on-site services, access, and maintenance level were the strongest predictors of use rather than surrounding socioeconomic conditions. Users valued the ecology of the sites, even while park managers highlighted invasive plants as a major maintenance issue. Even though many sites had low levels of use, there remains a strong sense of ownership, community, and safety. Taken together, there is a great deal of untapped stewardship potential in the city, with few organized avenues for users and residents to engage in stewardship. The findings support the hypothesized ‘virtuous circle’ whereby higher levels of maintenance and access beget greater use and attachment, which motivates stewardship. Alternatively, the more neglected forested parks become, the less use they will have, and the more unknown and unloved they will become. In high use sites, some outreach may be all that is needed to move into the ‘virtuous circle,’ while greater interventions will be needed in low use sites with no facilities, and these sites are the ones at greatest risk. Since the long-term sustainability of urban forests requires that local residents appreciate, use, and steward them, Springfield and other post-industrial cities need to find creative models for supporting greater involvement of residents in park stewardship while recognizing these residents frequently inhabit communities under stress.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Nursing Interventions to Reduce Health Risks from Climate Change Impact in Urban Areas: A Scoping Review Protocol

  Nursing Reports · 2023-03-17 · 14 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Considering that the public health sector has been considered as a key stakeholder in climate action, it seems important to understand what interventions are carried out globally by trusted professionals such as nurses engaged in health promotion and environmental health in optimizing the health of individuals, families, and communities toward the dissemination of lifestyle decarbonization and guidance on healthier climate-related choices. The objective of this review was to understand the extent and type of evidence related to the community-based interventions of nurses that are being led or have been implemented thus far with the aim of reducing the health risks from climate change impact in urban areas. The present protocol follows the JBI methodological framework. Databases to be searched include PubMed, MEDLINE complete, CINAHL, Scopus, Embase, Web of Science, SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), and BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). Hand searched references were also considered for inclusion. This review will include quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies from 2008 onwards. Systematic reviews, text, opinion papers, and the gray literature in English and Portuguese were also considered. Mapping the nurse led interventions or those that have been implemented thus far in urban areas may lead to further reviews that may help identify the best practices and gaps within the field. The results are presented in tabular format alongside a narrative summary.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Attitudes and preferences towards plants in urban green spaces: Implications for the design and management of Novel Urban Ecosystems

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2022 · 32 citations

  • Environmental resource management
  • Environmental planning
  • Business

  • There was stronger acceptance for native (98.5%) and cultivated (95.6%) plants. • Non-native and spontaneous plants were generally accepted by inquired professionals. • Information about NUE increased acceptance of non-native and spontaneous plants. • Design and management actions can improve NUE according to social expectations. • Landscape design/management professionals considered NUE relevant to climate change.

  PublisherDOI

• The influence of policy design on club good provisions: A study of for-profit shopping mall roof gardens in Shanghai

  Land Use Policy · 2022-08-29 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Greenspace provision in high-density metropolises is often constrained by land shortage; market-based tools show the potential to solve the problem. Privately-owned public greenspace is a type of club goods provided by private developers to club members with non-rival but excludable benefits. Club goods are for-profit, and their sustainability, or the long-term ability to deliver high-quality services, entails appropriate policy design. This paper explores how policy design influences club good’s sustainable provision, exemplified by the new developments of for-profit shopping-mall roof gardens in Shanghai, China. Such gardens established by developers to serve mall customers are club goods, providing ecosystem services and becoming significant compensation for urban greenspace shortage. Through field investigations and in-depth interviews, authors find that the current green-roof policy design increased roof gardens’ quantity but not quality and brought about gaps in legitimacy, profitability, and non-compliance. This research concludes that (1) general policy design can boost club good production; (2) more tailored policy design, including cross-department collaboration and tailored policymaking, are indispensable to improve clubs’ sustainability. This study suggests that policy designers take club good’s intrinsic characteristics into consideration and address the legitimacy, profitability, and compliance problems, which will enable market-based tools to be better utilized in public-goods provision.

  PublisherDOI

• Julius Gyula Fábos memorial: a passion for landscape planning and greenways

  Socio-Ecological Practice Research · 2022-08-22 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <i><b>Selected Papers from the 6th Fábos Conference on Landscape and Greenway Planning: Adapting to Expanding and Contracting Cities</b></i>

  Landscape Journal · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Johanna R Stacy

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  25 shared

• Anita Milman

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  25 shared

• Allison H. Roy

  United States Geological Survey

  25 shared

• Paige S. Warren

  7 shared

• Chingwen Cheng

  Pennsylvania State University

  5 shared

• Elisabeth M. Hamin

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  5 shared

• Yaser Abunnasr

  American University of Beirut

  5 shared

• Julius Gy. Fábos

  4 shared

Labs

• Landscape Architecture and Regional PlanningPI