The scaling of green space coverage in European cities
- 25 February 2009
- journal article
- Published by The Royal Society in Biology Letters
- Vol. 5 (3), 352-355
- https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.0010
Abstract
Most people on the planet live in dense aggregations, and policy directives emphasize green areas within cities to ameliorate some of the problems of urban living. Benefits of urban green spaces range from physical and psychological health to social cohesion, ecosystem service provision and biodiversity conservation. Green space coverage differs enormously among cities, yet little is known about the correlates or geography of this variation. This is important because urbanization is accelerating and the consequences for green space are unclear. Here, we use standardized major axis regression to explore the relationships between urban green space coverage, city area and population size across 386 European cities. We show that green space coverage increases more rapidly than city area, yet declines only weakly as human population density increases. Thus, green space provision within a city is primarily related to city area rather than the number of inhabitants that it serves, or a simple space-filling effect. Thus, compact cities (small size and high density) show very lowper capitagreen space allocation. However, at high levels of urbanicity, the green space network is robust to further city compaction. As cities grow, interactions between people and nature depend increasingly on landscape quality outside formal green space networks, such as street plantings, or the size, composition and management of backyards and gardens.Keywords
This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Health and Urban LivingScience, 2008
- Urban Land Area and Population Growth: A New Scaling Relationship for Metropolitan ExpansionUrban Studies, 2007
- Psychological benefits of greenspace increase with biodiversityBiology Letters, 2007
- Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in citiesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of SustainabilityJournal of Social Issues, 2007
- Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2006
- Biodiversity in urban habitat patchesScience of The Total Environment, 2006
- Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experienceTrends in Ecology & Evolution, 2005
- Ecosystem services in urban areasEcological Economics, 1999
- Where Does Community Grow?Environment and Behavior, 1997