Integrated Assessment of Health Benefits and Burdens of Urban Greenspace Designs

Bram Oosterbroek, Joop de Kraker (), Maud M. T. E. Huynen and Pim Martens
Additional contact information
Bram Oosterbroek: Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Joop de Kraker: Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Maud M. T. E. Huynen: Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands
Pim Martens: System Earth Science, University College Venlo, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 17, 1-18

Abstract: Urban greening is a major goal in policies for sustainable cities, and spatial planners are nowadays strongly interested in the benefits of greenspace for the well-being of urban residents. We present a novel, model-based approach to support the development of effective greening strategies. The approach is quantitative and spatially explicit and accounts for multiple health benefits as well as burdens. In our study, we applied this generic approach to the city of Maastricht (The Netherlands) and conducted an integrated, city-scale assessment of the health benefits and burdens of four urban greenspace designs. These included: ‘No greenspace’, ‘Current greenspace’, ‘Green parking lots and squares’, and ‘Optimized greenspace locations’. For each greenspace design, indicator values were calculated for five determinants of health and well-being: heat stress, air pollution, perceived unsafety, unattractive views, and tick-bite risk. To assess the health contribution of urban greenspace in a given design, these indicator values were compared with the values in the ‘No greenspace’ design. The study produced clear, quantitative conclusions about the health benefits and burdens of the urban greenspace designs for the case of Maastricht but also generated novel, more general insights relevant to the planning of urban greenspace for health and well-being. These insights concern the importance of translating health policy objectives into specific target values or thresholds and the importance of ‘smart’ choices in greenspace type and location that can effectively reduce trade-offs between health benefits and burdens, as well as the insights that adding more greenery not always improves urban health and that urban greenspace alone cannot solve major air pollution problems. The priorities for future research, which will address the limitations of the presented approach, concern a further expansion of the range of health benefits and burdens covered by the model and the development of a common metric for the entire range of health benefits and burdens to optimize greenspace design and maximize its overall net health benefit.

Keywords: spatial model; urban green space; human health; climate adaptation; ecosystem services; ecosystem disservices; GIS; quantitative assessment; scenario analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7534/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7534/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:17:p:7534-:d:1467944

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().