A methodological approach to the environmental quantitative assessment of urban parks

• Urban parks and green open spaces serve important environmental functions.
• Examinations of urban park environmental effects focused on one or two nuisances.
• It is difficult to evaluate the overall urban parks effect on environmental quality.
• Past methodologies for urban parks assessment did not base on in-situ measurements.
• We proposed a methodology based on verified tools for environmental assessment.

This study proposes an integrative methodology for the environmental assessment of urban parks. Since most of the studies that investigated the environmental effect of urban parks have focused on only one or two nuisances, a difficulty exists in evaluating the overall influence of urban parks on environmental quality. Moreover, the small number of studies that have tried to suggest methodological approaches for a quantitative environmental assessment of urban green spaces did not base their assessment methods on the analysis of in-situ objective measurements of air pollution, noise and climatic nuisances and their cumulative impact in a specific location. The proposed methodology is based on verified and feasible methods: in-situ measurements, data analysis, indexing by standard indices and finely scaling according to a common denominator of unified criteria, in an attempt to evaluate environmental quality. This approach enables identification of the specific nuisance that dominates the environment quality level and comparison between the different sites along the year. The proposed assessment method can offer an applicable tool for urban planners and architects in the planning process, so as to achieve ideal environmental quality for the benefit of urban inhabitants. The findings emphasize the importance of public green spaces in the urban tissue and justify investment in these spaces in terms of sustainable development.