Assessing local governments’ perception of the potential implementation of biophilic urbanism in Chile: A latent class approach

Biophilic urbanism seeks to integrate nature into the planning and design of urban spaces to pursue two main goals: making cities greener and improving the health and well-being of its inhabitants. Based on ordinal data gathered through a national survey, this paper analyses the perceptions of local governments on the potential implementation of this approach in Chile. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), heterogeneous groups of responses are identified as ‘Latent Classes.’ We implement two LCAs, one assessing the importance of the criteria driving biophilic urbanism and one evaluating the perceived barriers inhibiting this approach. We also examine local governments’ perceptions regarding the most and the least feasible Biophilic Urbanism Initiatives (BUIs) by considering a set of driving criteria as a base scenario. The first LCA reveals two groups of respondents in which both the current administration and financial resources are perceived to be driving biophilic urbanism. The second LCA reveals three groups of respondents: two groups perceiving the barriers as neutral and barely inhibiting the approach, respectively; and a third group pointing to the lack of economic resources and the lack of support from national and regional governments. Despite the differences in the perception of the criteria driving and the barriers inhibiting biophilic urbanism, the latent classes suggest the most and the least viable initiatives for implementation to be similar. Results are discussed in the context of the wider literature on biophilic urbanism.