Urban Green Space Policies: Performance and Success Conditions in European Cities

enabling partnership among local authorities, local businesses and voluntary groups is also
important in this process.

Fourth, most development plans adopt a simple, population-based standard approach to the
need for green space in new housing developments and they largely ignore the other green
spaces as part of other developments such as industry, leisure, etc. It is desirable that the
planning authorities develop their own local standards for green spaces not only in new
housing developments but also in non-housing developments, such as industry and business.

Fifth, quantity, quality and accessibility of green spaces in order to form the basis for a vision
for urban green space are needed. Therefore, it is of strategic importance to compare and
evaluate urban green space policies for highlighting the “best practices” for relevant policy
recommendations and guidance for society and planning authorities to improve the quality of
life in cities.

Against this background, the present study investigates urban green spaces from a policy
evaluation perspective and analyses European cities in order to obtain strategic and policy
relevant information on the key features of urban green. The study aims to compare and
evaluate the current management practices in European cities on the basis of the performance
of urban green space policies. The next section evaluates “urban green” from a
multidimensional approach including ecological, social, economic and planning perspectives.
Section 3 gives a description of the study and introduces the artificial intelligence method by
means of rough set analysis which is deployed to assess and identify the most important
factors that are responsible for successes and failures of urban green space policies. Section 4
compares “green performance” of European cities in terms of the present situation and
priorities in decision-making and planning on the basis of the empirical results of the rough
set analysis. The final section offers some concluding remarks that focus on the critical
aspects of green planning policies.

2. Urban green spaces

Urban green spaces provide a range of benefits at both the national and the local level and
offer many use opportunities to people in different ways. They help to define and support the
identity of towns and cities, which can enhance their attractiveness for living, working,

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