Urban Green Spaces (UGS) provide critical ecosystem services, including temperature regulation, pollution reduction, and mental health benefits. While the unequal distribution of these amenities is well-documented globally, research in Latin America often relies on static accessibility metrics focused on single metropolitan areas, overlooking the dynamic social usage of these spaces across diverse climatic contexts. This study addresses this gap by integrating remote sensing data (Landsat 8), census information, and large-scale mobile phone records (XDR) to analyze green space segregation across six Chilean conurbations spanning a latitudinal gradient from Antofagasta (23°S) to Puerto Montt (41°S). We quantified vegetation vigor using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and characterized neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) using a multidimensional index. Furthermore, we utilized mobile records to calculate “social entropy” as a dynamic measure of social mixing within parks throughout the day. Our results reveal a “green divide” consistent across the climatic gradient in which parks in lower-SES neighborhoods are not only significantly less green but also exhibit lower social mixing compared to those in affluent areas, which draw a more diverse base of users. These findings suggest that structural and administrative factors — rather than local climate — are the primary drivers of green inequality. We conclude that effective urban planning must move beyond simple provision targets to address the quality and social integration capacity of green spaces, ensuring equitable resilience for all urban residents.
Urban green landscapes (UGL) influence human health through a wide range of psychological, physiological, social, and ecological pathways, yet research on this issue remains fragmented across disconnected disciplines. This review consolidates evidence from environmental psychology, public health, landscape architecture, urban ecology, as well as fields such as neuroscience and artificial intelligence to clarify how UGL support physical, mental, and social well-being. Using a four-stage methodological approach including literature search and screening, thematic analysis of 25 years of scholarship, structured multidisciplinary expert discussion, and evidence integration, we identify seven cross-cutting issues that define the emerging domain of Healthy Landscapes. These issues include behavior and mobility, social health and connection, health equity and vulnerable populations, pollution mitigation and ecological pathways, climate and spatial morphology, health-supportive planning and design, and interdisciplinary collaboration. We also highlight how landscape morphology, equity considerations, and interdisciplinary collaboration shape health outcomes. Across these themes, we identify priority directions for research and propose a conceptual framework that integrates exposure, perception, behavior, context, and ecological processes. By advancing a more coherent understanding of how UGL influence health, this review provides a foundation for evidence-based landscape planning and design that can support healthier, more equitable, and climate-resilient cities.
As global warming increases heat extremes, urban greening is becoming increasingly important, particularly where the canopy-layer urban heat island (CUHI) intensifies nighttime heat exposure. However, neighborhood-scale green-cover targets are rarely grounded in locally observed air-temperature differences. This study develops an empirical green-cover benchmark for Copenhagen and applies it to assess neighborhood-scale gaps. The relationship between green cover and nighttime air temperature during warm waves was examined across nine Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classes representing an urban-to-natural gradient. Air-temperature observations were obtained from privately owned weather stations across the Capital Region of Denmark, while green-cover shares were derived from a 20 cm resolution land-cover map. Among the built classes, LCZ 9, representing a sparsely built form, had the lowest mean air nighttime temperatures. Its land-cover characteristics were used to derive a 60% green-cover benchmark. Application to Copenhagen’s 11 administrative neighborhoods identified the largest gaps in Inner City, Norrebro, and Osterbro, with green coverages of only 18–21%. Vesterbro, Amager Ost, and Frederiksberg reached half of the benchmark with coverages of 27–31%, while Bronshoj and Amager Vest had the smallest gaps with coverages of 49% and 56%, respectively. The benchmark provides a locally grounded reference for identifying where greening may be most relevant from a CUHI perspective.
Environmental justice has been widely investigated in North American and Northern European contexts, but there are few comparative analyses of Mediterranean cities and these are methodologically fragmented. This study focuses on Barcelona, Valencia, Palermo and Catania, and investigates whether Mediterranean cities share common socio-spatial regimes in the distribution of urban tree cover density. It also explores how these regimes are associated with housing-market conditions, educational attainment, population ageing and the spatial concentration of foreign residents. To overcome differences in administrative geographies and data structures, environmental and socio-demographic information is integrated into a harmonized 100 × 100 m grid. A Finite Mixture of Beta Regression (FMBR) is then used to identify latent intra-urban regimes in which the relationship between tree cover density and socio-demographic variables remains internally homogeneous. The results show that Mediterranean urban greening is not organized through a single social gradient. Barcelona appears highly segmented, Valencia is dominated by a broad low-greenness regime interrupted by small greener enclaves, Palermo combines an extensive low-greenness fabric with smaller green pockets, and Catania is more socially differentiated than environmentally polarized. Housing-market pressure, the concentration of the foreign population, household structure, education and ageing are important factors, but vary in significance across the regimes. This paper confirms that the four cities feature constrained greening, with variations according to local morphology, land-market pressure and demographic composition. These findings support urban greening policies that are sensitive not only to aggregate canopy deficits, but also to the socio-spatial regimes through which environmental amenities are unevenly distributed.
Visible greenery, an important contribution of urban street trees, has been shown to correlate with the spatial quality of streets, as well as with people's health and well-being. However, existing approaches provide limited support for quantifying the site-specific visible greenery contribution of individual trees, thereby constraining the evaluation of specific trees and the comparison of alternative planting locations and spatial configurations. To address this research gap, this study proposes Tree-based Visible Greenery Provision (tVGP), a metric that quantifies the visible greenery contribution of individual trees across selected viewpoints, and develops a 3D visibility analysis-based tool for its calculation. The tool comprises four main steps: data preparation, simulation of the 3D visibility of trees, classification of sightlines by tree ID, and calculation of tVGP. It was applied to a study area near the center of Munich, Germany, to test the feasibility of calculating tVGP for existing street trees and compare hypothetical planting configurations. A preliminary comparison with panoramic photographs showed that the simulated results captured relative differences in visible greenery at the individual-tree level. The applications further demonstrated that the tool can identify site-specific variation among existing trees, distinguish the contributions of individual trees to viewpoint-level visible greenery, and compare planting alternatives under different tree numbers and spatial configurations. Within the evaluated scenario space, the analysis of planting configurations showed nonlinear increases and diminishing gains in the highest tVGP as tree number increased, together with substantial variation among configurations containing the same number of trees. The proposed tool provides a site-specific framework for linking visible greenery analysis with individual-tree assessment and the relative comparison of alternative street-tree planting options under consistent spatial and simulation settings.
