Abstract
ABSTRACTThe paper summarises the multiple benefits of urban green spaces for city dwellers and provides an overview of proximity approaches and common key parameters for green-space quantification in cities. We propose indicators for the assessment of the ecosystem service ‘recreation in the city’ on a national scale. The calculation procedure, which takes into account the best available data sets in Germany, is explained. The determination of threshold values regarding green-space standards comprising type, size and distance is crucial to such studies. The results, the degree of provision with public green spaces in all German cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants (n = 182) and their accessibility, are presented. In total, green spaces are accessible for daily recreation for 74.3% of the inhabitants in German cities, which means that underprovision affects 8.1 million city dwellers. Some indicator details are shown for the examples of Wiesbaden and Stuttgart. Finally, we discuss the approach and values of the proposed and quantified indicators in a German and European context.EDITED BY Christine Fürst
Highlights
In Target 2, Action 5, the EU Biodiversity Strategy stipulates that the member states will map and assess the state of the ecosystems and their services and promote the integration of these values into the accounting and reporting systems at the EU and national level by 2020
Green spaces are accessible for daily recreation for 74.3% of the inhabitants in German cities, which means that underprovision affects 8.1 million city dwellers
The proportion of inhabitants who find at least small nearby green spaces in the sense of daily or leisuretime recreation and larger green spaces at a medium distance for local recreation is approximately 74.3%. This means that 25.6 million city dwellers have access to both types of green spaces in German cities
Summary
In Target 2, Action 5, the EU Biodiversity Strategy stipulates that the member states will map and assess the state of the ecosystems and their services and promote the integration of these values into the accounting and reporting systems at the EU and national level by 2020. This includes urban ecosystems with their range of services, as a large number of consumers, users or beneficiaries of ecosystem services (ESs) are concentrated here (Maes et al 2014). Monitoring with indicators involves representing temporal developments This requires the databases to be reliably available in comparable quality on a national scale.
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