Accessibility of urban blue in German major cities

Action 5 of the EU 2020 Biodiversity Strategy explicitly mentions that EU member states, with assistance of the Commission, will map and assess the state of ecosystems and ecosystem services in their national territory by 2014. Water represents an important landscape element and contributes to human health and well-being in urban areas. However, in Germany - like in many other European countries - detailed information on the accessibility of urban blue at the household and individual level is missing. This study investigates the accessibility of urban blue by merging geocoded household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and German census population data (GCD) with geocoded data on urban blue distribution from the European Urban Atlas (EUA) for German major cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Accessibility of urban blue is measured as the Euclidean distance between the household and the nearest water-site in meter and calculated as the coverage of waters in a 500 m buffer around the place of living in square meters. Results of the distance analysis show an average distance between the households and the nearest water site of 1,390 m, meaning that 20% of the German urban population lives within a maximum distance of 500 m between the place of residence and the nearest water site. The average blue space provision in German major cities adds up to 3.5 m2 per capita. Moreover, our findings indicate that individuals with migration background and individuals with nationalities others than German live on average in closer distances to waters while individuals with no migration background, individuals with German nationality and childless households are surrounded by higher coverages of urban blue. The findings provide helpful information for policy and planning to ensure an adequate blue space provision in Germany.