Temporal trend of green space coverage in China and its relationship with urbanization over the last two decades

Abstract

► The green space coverage in Chinese cities increased steadily from 1991 to 2009. ► Cities in the same region exhibited long-term similar trends of development. ► Population, land area and GDP significantly affected green space coverage. ► Per capita GDP had the highest independent contribution to green space coverage. ► A linear model to predict variance in green space was constructed. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o Irrespective of which side is taken in the densification-sprawl debate, insights into the relationship between urban green space coverage and urbanization have been recognized as essential for guiding sustainable urban development. However, knowledge of the relationships between socio-economic variables of urbanization and long-term green space change is still limited. In this paper, using simple regression, hierarchical partitioning and multi-regression, the temporal trend in green space coverage and its relationship with urbanization were investigated using data from 286 cities between 1989 and 2009, covering all provinces in mainland China with the exception of Tibet. We found that: [1] average green space coverage of cities investigated increased steadily from 17.0% in 1989 to 37.3% in 2009; [2] cities with higher recent green space coverage also had relatively higher green space coverage historically; [3] cities in the same region exhibited similar long-term trends in green space coverage; [4] eight of the nine variables characterizing urbanization showed a significant positive linear relationship with green space coverage, with 'per capita GDP' having the highest independent contribution (24.2%);[5] among the climatic and geographic factors investigated, only mean elevation showed a significant effect; and [6] using the seven largest contributing individual factors, a linear model to predict variance in green space coverage was constructed. Here, we demonstrated that green space coverage in built-up areas tended to reflect the effects of urbanization rather than those of climatic or geographic factors. Quantification of the urbanization effects and the characteristics of green space development in China may provide a valuable reference for research into the processes of urban sprawl and its relationship with green space change.

Urbanization Effects on Vegetation and Surface Urban Heat Islands in China’s Yangtze River Basin

“…The growing season vegetation is mainly during April to October in the Northern Hemisphere [7], and the highest EVI may be in summer, so the decreasing vegetation was more evident in summer. Comparatively, the decreasing trends of annual ∆EVI in OUAs were much lower than the whole urban areas (−0.00209/year and −0.00329/year averaged for 10 cities for OUAs and the whole urban area, respectively), which was probably due to the Chinese governments' policy of creating and preserving the vegetated area to deal with urbanization [41,51]. …”

Research on the Sustainable Development of Green-Space in Beijing Using the Dynamic Systems Model

“…Based on our definition of the sustainable development of green space, relevant literature [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] and the Evaluation Standard for Urban Landscape and the National Ecology Garden City Standard in China [32], while considering the accessibility of the data for indices, we establish our evaluation index system for the SDGS ( Table 1). The index was classified into three categories, including green space resources, the social economy and environment, using 13 detailed indices in total.…”

Relationship between green space-related morphology and noise pollution

“…The most frequent use is through land use regression (LUR) models (Goudreau et al, 2014;Ragettli et al, 2016), or in a local scale through the TRAP tool by Pheasant et al (2010), which can be very useful in the absence of noise maps, but still of limited range and dependent on on-site noise measurements. Widely used indicators for green spaces usually refer to green space coverage (Fuller and Gaston, 2009;Zhao et al, 2013) or green space per inhabitant (ISO 37120;WHO, 2010). Others include also the proximity to green areas (Herzele and Wiedemann, 2003;Hillsdon et al, 2006;Kabisch et al, 2016;Morar et al, 2014;Natural England, 2010;Ståhle, 2010) or more complex indices referring to the balance between green and built up areas (De la Barrera et al, 2016).…”