Planning small for winning big: Small urban green space distribution patterns in an expanding city

Abstract

While major urban areas are expanding, becoming more crowded, vegetated lands areshrinking. Built-up densification limits the planning of large urban green spaces,depriving urban dwellers of the benefits provided by such structures. In this context,small public urban green spaces (SPUGS) become of high value for urban landscapes,and their distribution throughout the city should aim to compensate the lack of largergreen areas. The driving forces of SPUGS distribution may be linked to the urbanfunctions they are usually paired with.The current study aimed to determine which are the urban functions that benefit ofhigher amounts of SPUGS in their proximities and to map the distribution and densityof SPUGS within Bucharest, helping us expose the green deprived communities.Results revealed that multi-dwelling residential areas are the ones with higher share ofSPUGS within walking distance. Nevertheless, analysis on SPUGS deprivation withinthe city showed that communist planned residential neighbourhoods are greener thanthe ones developed in the past three decades. Healthcare and commercial functionswithin the city recorded smaller shares of SPUGS in their proximity, highlighting thatvulnerable groups (such as ill people) are exposed to less vegetation, and that publicplanning documents are not encouraging developers to allocate more land for greenfeature development.These results are relevant for projecting the quality of outdoor environmentsthroughout Romania’s capital and for assessing potential future managementchallenges. The outcomes of this research provide local policy makers and plannerswith the vulnerable areas in which immediate action for expanding the greeninfrastructures should take place. At the same time, the methodological approachdescribed in the study proved to be efficient in assessing the distribution of SPUGSthroughout the city and the determinants of this distribution. It can be easily replicatedin other cities by scholars and planners.