Cemeteries, like urban public parks, are an important part of the urban ecosystem, providing semi-natural habitats for many plant and animal species as well as a wide range of ecosystem services: they improve air quality, reduce the urban heat island phenomenon and provide aesthetic and recreational value. This paper explores the role of the cemeteries in the green infrastructure network beyond their sacred and memorial role and their importance as a habitat for urban flora and fauna. In our study, we compared two large public cemeteries of Budapest (Nemzeti Sírkert/National Graveyard and Új Köztemető/New Public Cemetery) with the Zentralfriedhof Wien (Central Cemetery of Vienna), the latter of which has been forward-looking in terms of green infrastructure development and habitat creation in the past years. Our goal was to determine which maintenance technologies and green space development methods are most beneficial in terms of sustainable habitat creation and the use of appropriate plant species in public cemeteries.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.