A method for planning mandatory green in China

Green space positively affects the quality of the environment and urban life. However it is still hard to decide where and how much green space should be planned. In China, mandatory green space required by national and local laws and regulations entails the specifying of locations and quantities of the green space.This paper proposes a new method for automatically generating the plan of mandatory green and presents a case study in the Yuhua District in Nanjing, China. Based on the regulatory plans of this area, GIS data layers are first assembled. A model is built to generate the final plan of mandatory green of the study area. In comparison with the modeled mandatory green plan, the regulatory green plan is found to be arbitrary and to fails to comply with legal requirements.The results present the model for generating the plan of mandatory green is effective and accurate. This model bridges the gap between the legal parameters of mandatory green and practical green space planning and enables those legal parameters to become the guide and assessing criteria for planning.

► Mandatory green embodies the quantitative legal parameters in the urban plan. ► The mandatory green model is effective to generate an objective green space plan. ► Based on GIS, the model is easy to operate and has a wide range of applications. ► It’s a simple but interesting application of GIS with basic buffering method.