Parks in context

Advancing citywide spatial quality assessments of urban green spaces using fine-scaled indicators

authored by

Roland Kraemer, Nadja Kabisch

Abstract

Urban green spaces have gained attention because of their increasing relevance to human well-being in the context of challenges related to urbanization and climate change. Detailed, systematic, citywide assessments of specific urban green space characteristics that provide a sufficient understanding of resident interactions with green spaces and respective ecosystem service flows are lacking. We chose the city of Leipzig, one of the fastest growing cities in Germany, as a case study to assess the quality of publicly available green spaces by incorporating spatial context as a key dimension in determining their actual quality. We established 33 indicators that describe (1) natural elements, e.g., the types and configuration of vegetation and the proportion of water bodies; (2) built elements, e.g., various recreational facilities and path density; and (3) the embeddedness of green spaces within the built, social, and natural environment (context), e.g., the number of neighboring residents, nearby green or blue elements, and exposure to traffic. Based on these indicators, we developed a scoring approach that provides an evaluation of green space quality in terms of the potential to provide recreational ecosystem services. We identified and discussed spatial gaps and deficits in the quality of green space supply as well as leverage points for making operational improvements at the individual green space level. Our study provides urban planning guidance for identifying untapped potential for ecosystem services provision, e.g., because of usage barriers, and may help to balance the tradeoffs between benefits for citizens and ecology and thus improve green spaces for both people and nature.

External Organisation(s)

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin)
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)

Type

Article

Journal

Ecology and society

Volume

26

ISSN

1708-3087

Publication date

2021

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Ecology

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG 13 - Climate Action

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12485-260245 (Access: Open)