Urban green space qualities reframed toward a public value management paradigm: The case of the Nordic Green Space Award

The change toward a public value management (PVM) paradigm in the public sector has challenged urban green space managers to rethink how they define and assess their services. In the Nordic countries, the challenge has resulted in the development of the Nordic Green Space Award (NSGA), as a new shared standard. This article reviews the NGSA scheme and its development. The development of the scheme embodies a methodology for how the question of 'what makes for a good urban green space' collectively can be addressed within a particular regional context. The resulting scheme relies on 'structure and general aspects', 'functionality and experience', and 'management and organisation', as three principal themes and provides an easily manageable, unified and affordable approach to assessment of a variety of urban green spaces. Conceptually, the scheme resembles other comparable assessment schemes; however, its credibility rests on its regional grounding in the Nordic context.