Geographical Stratification of Green Urban Areas

This article studies the provision of urban green areas in cities where residents have
preferences for the size of and access to those areas. At the optimum, the number
of urban green spaces is a nonmonotone function of distance to the city center,
while the sizes and distances to other urban green areas increase as one moves to
the urban fringe. This article empirically investigates those properties for the 300
largest European cities by using the Global Monitoring Environment Services Urban
Atlas database (European Environmental Agency). The empirical analysis confirms the
nonmonotone relationship between the number of urban green spaces and the distance
to the city center. The distance between two parks also increases as one
moves toward the urban fringe.