Comparing costs and supply of supporting and regulating services provided by urban parks at different spatial scales

Researchers all over the world have been involved for some time in valuing and measuring ecosystem services. However, methods to value both costs and supply and to match them on the same scale are still under discussion. This study assesses costs and supply of a subset of supporting and regulating ecosystem service in urban parks and discusses the role and the value of these services under an environmental/economic point of view using emergy synthesis. A total of 73 parks in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, are used as a case study. Results show that green areas in urban parks provide valuable services to the city's community through transformation processes of natural renewable inputs that would be otherwise wasted. The method can be applied in different locations and contexts to provide useful information to public managers and urban planners.