Description

The proportion of all vegetated areas within the city boundaries in relation to the total area of the city.

Green urban areas (GUAs) such as parks, public and private gardens, and even trees lining streets can facilitate climate change adaptation and mitigation, improve health and quality of life, and may favour biodiversity conservation.

Vegetated areas in cities can generate a cooling effect thanks to evapotranspiration and shading, which may improve the thermal comfort of urban dwellers and increase their resilience to heatwave events. Moreover, green urban areas are unsealed, allowing the infiltration of storm water and decreasing rainwater runoff. The presence of GUAs favours pollution control as vegetation provides cleaner air by removing pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and microscopic particulate matter.

GUAs have an important value beyond their environmental benefits and aesthetic assets. Exposure to greenspaces can restore the physical and mental health of city dwellers by enhancing psychological health and reducing blood pressure and stress levels.

Scale as linked to D2.2 framework

• City
• Neighborhood

Data source [ link to data framework]

• Satellite imagery-derived datasets

Data needs

• Land use –land cover – in this application Urban Atlas https://land.copernicus.eu/local/urban-atlas/urban-atlas-2012?tab=download
• Municipal boundary – in this application Urban Audit data (Eurostat 2017). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference data/administrative-units-statistical-units/urban-audit

Expected Outputs

• Minimum mapping unit 0.25 ha
• Unit: %
• Data collected every 6 years when these datasets are updated

Calculation methods

• This parameter is based on several classes (11230, 11240, 14100, 14200, 20000, 30000) of the Urban Atlas data, which contain substantial green spaces (the two least dense residential classes with a sealing degree < 30 %, urban parks, sports and leisure facilities, forest, semi-natural and agriculture). It is computed for the core city as defined by Eurostat/Urban Audit. The procedure includes the following steps:
  • 1. Selection of the GUAs typologies to be included.
    • In this application the following Urban Atlas classes were included :
      • 11230-discontonuos low density urban fabric, 11240- discontinuous very low density urban fabric, 14100-green urban areas, 14200- sports and leisure facilities, 20000-agricultiral land, 30000-natural and seminatural areas
  • 2. Sum of the total area of GUAs in the selected city 3. Compute the share of GUAs per city surface In this application the city surface was derived from the Urban Audit data (Eurostat 2017).

Links and references

• https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/sustainability-transitions/urban environment/sub-sections/urban-green-infrastructure/typology-for urban-green-infrastructure
• https://eea.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=42bf8cc04eb d49908534efde04c4eec8%20&embed=true