Green areas, the most significant indicator of the sustainability of cities: research on their utility for urban planning

Abstract

This work summarizes a very extensive study conducted in the city of Valencia, Spain, on the role of green areas in the comfort of the city. Previously, the environmental parameters that make up the urban environment were studied. With these values, a very large series of comfort indexes was analyzed and validated, and the indexes that exhibited the best behavior were determined. The role of green areas in public city spaces was also studied: the retention of solar radiation and pollution retention capability. This culminated in the formulation of the comfort indexes according to the amount of green areas, which, through statistical correlation, allowed the determination of the surface area of green areas required for the city to be considered theoretically comfortable. This work completes the analysis of these formulations for a wider spectrum of measurements in the city with a greater scope and greater variety of spaces and situations. The three comfort indexes that performed best, i.e., those with greatest statistical certainty, have been reformulated for Valencia. The work concludes with research from the previous experimentation applied to the green plan of Valencia. The final solution takes into account the proposals put forward by the Valencian Authority on the plan for protection of the Huerta, the natural market garden setting on which the city of Valencia stands, following the philosophy of the European Territorial Strategy and the European Landscape Convention. © 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.