Abstract
ABSTRACTThe presence of urban green areas significantly impacts urban inhabitants’ well-being. However, comparative studies across European cities are constraint by urban administrative boundaries, which commonly do not match the continuous built-up urban area. This makes comparative research on environmental indicators very problematic, as administrative boundaries are not usually appropriate to define the urban human environment. Therefore, this study aimis to explore the use of night-time light (NTL) images of the International Space Station (ISS) to delineate the continuous built-up area (CBA) of selected European cities to calculate the urban green area share per alternatively derived city extent. The result of the CBA shows that NTL images provide a robust data source to make the urban extent of European cities comparable. By comparing results of different datasets on green areas, we discuss the limitations of existing indicators and opportunities for new ones. Results show that green areas are rarely in close proximity to human living environment, even though the share of urban green areas within the CBA might be larger, as in comparison to the administrative boundary. We conclude that ISS NTL imagery is very suitable for mapping the CBA when aiming at comparability of environmental indicators across cities.
Highlights
The environmental quality of urban areas is an important concern at the local, and the European scale (Council of the European Union, European Parliament, 2013)
The mapping results of the four cities provide a clear delineation of the continuous built-up area (CBA) (Figure 10), depicting well the urban morphology
The indicators derived in this study show the urban green area availability as a share of newly derived urban boundaries
Summary
The environmental quality of urban areas is an important concern at the local, and the European scale (Council of the European Union, European Parliament, 2013). Green areas have an important contribution to the environmental quality of European cities and their inhabitants’ well-being (Douglas, Lennon, & Scott, 2017). At a European environmental policy scale, a sufficient amount of green areas is found essential to reduce air pollution (de Ridder et al, 2004; Jordan & Adelle, 2012; Yow, 2007). They help to reduce other negative aspects of living in cities, like the urban heat island phenomenon (Koc, Osmond, & Peters, 2018) and improve the air quality (Chenoweth et al, 2018). Each municipality/city makes use of different indicators when assessing its urban green areas (Kabisch, Strohbach, Haase, & Kronenberg, 2016), such as per capita coverage or the share of these areas in the overall city’s area, yet such indicators take the administrative boundary into account, and not the extent of the actual built-up area
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