Urban greenspaces benefit both human utility and biodiversity

Urban greenspaces are essential for both human well-being and biodiversity, with their importance continually growing in the face of increasing urbanization. The dual role of these spaces raises questions about how their planning and management can best serve the diverse needs of both people and biodiversity. Our goal was to quantify the synergies and tradeoffs between human utility and biodiversity benefits in urban greenspaces. Through a detailed inventory, we mapped 639 urban greenspaces throughout Broward County, Florida — one of the most populous counties in the United States. We identified and categorized various physical attributes contributing to human utility, including playgrounds, athletic facilities, and picnic areas. Concurrently, we assessed biodiversity by estimating species richness within an urban greenspace. We found little relationship between overall human utility and biodiversity. More specifically, we found a positive correlation between human utility attributes such as playgrounds, bodies of water, and nature preserves with biodiversity, indicating potential synergies rather than tradeoffs. This alignment between human utility and biodiversity benefits suggests that urban parks can effectively serve multiple values without necessarily sacrificing one for the other. Both human utility and biodiversity correlate with greenspace size, emphasizing the significance of larger greenspaces in accommodating diverse values. Our results offer insights for optimizing planning and management of urban greenspaces to simultaneously benefit local communities and ecosystems, highlighting the potential for harmonizing human and biodiversity needs to foster sustainable cities.