Europe’s Greenest Cities Might Not Be the Ones You Think
A new study ranking access to green space in more than 1,000 European cities finds some unexpected winners and losers.
Looks pleasant enough, but the Italian city of Trieste has Europe’s highest rate of premature mortality associated with lack of green space.
Photographer: Alexander Spatari/Moment RF via Getty Images
With their stately parks, compact layouts and bicycle-filled streets, European cities like Paris and Copenhagen can often seem like poster children for urban livability, especially compared to sprawling, car-centric counterparts in North America and elsewhere. But a new study from Barcelona’s Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) complicates that narrative somewhat, painting a picture of an urban Europe where a widespread lack of accessible green space could shorten the lives of tens of thousands of residents every year.
Analyzing more than 1,000 cities of over 100,000 residents across the continent, the ISGlobal study, which was published in The Lancet Planetary Health and can be explored fully here, suggests that cities in Europe could prevent 43,000 deaths annually if they followed the World Health Organization’s guidelines on access to green space. More than 60% of urban residents studied lacked the access to greenery that the WHO recommends — at least 0.5 hectares (1.24 acres) of green space within 300 meters (984 feet) linear distance of every home.