Distribution and accessibility of green spaces and urban vegetation across Malmö’s Regional Statistical Areas

Sammanfattning

Green spaces are important parts of our cities supporting both public health and providing ecosystem services such as lowering air temperature and providing stress relief. The study area, Malmö is a city in southern Sweden with a high population density. The city is largely built on and surrounded by agricultural land resulting in few naturally occurring green spaces and only planted trees. Despite this, there are currently no detailed spatial analyses of canopy coverage or green space accessibility in the city. This makes it important to analyse Malmö's canopy coverage and the green space accessibility. This study assessed the accessibility and canopy coverage in Malmö through GIS analysis. Accessibility and canopy coverage thresholds were based on the 3-30-300 guideline, which recommends a minimum canopy coverage of 30% across neighbourhoods and that all residents should live within 300 meters of a green space. The results showed that a majority of Malmö adheres to the 300-meter threshold with the city-wide mean green space distance of 297 meters. There were exceptions; parts of the north and the southeast were located significantly further away from green spaces, upwards of 2000 meters. The canopy coverage was substantially lower than recommended, with a mean canopy coverage of 2.8%, and with lower coverage observed in the outskirts of the city. The coverage and accessibility were also analyzed in relation to socioeconomic status showing that more deprived areas generally had higher canopy coverage and were located at shorter distances from green spaces. The findings suggest that the city should primarily focus on improving canopy coverage, by both increasing overall canopy coverage and protecting existing trees.