Modelling Accessibility to Urban Green Areas Using Open Earth Observations Data: A Novel Approach to Support the Urban SDG in Four European Cities

Gregory Giuliani,Eduard Interwies,Yaniss Guigoz,Veronika Vysna,Nicolas Ray,Ian Dickie,Ekkehard Petri

doi:10.3390/rs13030422

Abstract

Cities are recognised as key enablers for the world’s sustainable future. Urban sprawl and inefficient use of land are important issues significantly impacting the provision and use of open green spaces. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 11.7.1 aims at globally monitoring the amount of land that is dedicated by cities for public space. In Europe, the indicator “Share of urban population without green urban areas in their neighbourhood” is supposed to correspond to the SDG11.7.1 but is currently on-hold due to methodological issues and lack of data. Moreover, to efficiently assess public space conditions, timely and spatially disaggregated information is essential but not yet widely adopted by urban practitioners. Hereafter, we use a combination of satellite and crowdsourced Earth Observations (EO) to model physical accessibility to urban green spaces in four European cities. Findings suggest that it is technically feasible to derive information on the share of urban population without green urban areas in their neighbourhood. Results demonstrate that the proposed methodology represents a consistent, valid, reliable, low-cost, timely and continuous source of information for sustainable urban development. Open and free EO data can be a good complement to enhance official and traditional statistics on urban areas facilitating EU reporting against the SDG indicator for better comparison between EU countries.

Highlights

Over the last three decades, cities worldwide have altogether increased in size by an area equivalent to Ireland [1]
We first reviewed the current status in the field to identify existing limitations and possible technical solutions to generate a potential EU Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator “Share of urban population without green urban areas in their neighbourhood”
To validate the technical feasibility, identify the possible issues and determine the potential of our methodology to determine the accessibility coverage to urban green space as well as to contribute to the measurement of the EU SDG indicator, we tested it in four different cities

Summary

Introduction

Over the last three decades, cities worldwide have altogether increased in size by an area equivalent to Ireland [1]. 59% of cities have observed a rise in land consumed per new resident [4]. Urban sprawl and inefficient use of land are important issues with many consequences [5,6]. Two important ones are the expansion of existing urban settlements and creation of new ones, and the increase of density and use of urban areas. These issues put pressure on urban infrastructures (e.g., road and water supply/sewage networks, transport infrastructures) and have significant impacts on the use of open and green spaces such as threat of their privatisation or loss of their original functions [4].

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion