This article was originally published by Springer Nature Research Communities
By Maryia Bakhtsiyarava

Assistant Research Professor. Environmental and Occupational Health, Urban Health Collaborative.

Latin America is the second-largest urbanized region in the world, with over 80% of the population residing in urban areas.¹ Urbanization in the region, which intensified in the 1960s, spurred economic growth but also left a profound mark on land use, including green spaces. City growth was prioritized, often at the expense of forests or other vegetated areas. Urbanization was not accompanied by policies that ensured livable and walkable areas with natural amenities such as greenery. A vestige of that era is a profoundly unequal distribution of urban green space (UGS) in the region – a finding that has emerged from the limited but rapidly growing literature from the region.^2,3

A recently published analysis of SALURBAL data⁴ sheds light on potential social, economic and environmental drivers of greenspace distribution in Latin American cities. This work is part of Salud Urbana en América Latina – Clima (Urban Health in Latin America –  Climate), or SALURBAL-Climate study,⁵ a Wellcome Trust funded interdisciplinary multi-country project bringing together researchers from epidemiology, public health, geography, urban planning, and other adjacent fields to study urban health and health disparities in relation to climate-related exposures in Latin American cities.

The study combined heterogeneous sources of data on urban green spaces in 371 large (population ≥ 100,000) Latin American cities in 11 countries. Data included satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), measures of the amount and spatial configuration of green patches from a land cover map, and data on urban parks obtained via web data mining and remote sensing. These different metrics each provide unique insights into UGS: NDVI is related to vegetation amount and intensity; the land cover map metrics provide information about the amount and spatial arrangement of greenery in cities; finally, urban parks represent developed green open areas designed and used for urban recreation and leisure. The research investigated the variability of these UGS metrics in relation to cities’ natural, built, and socioeconomic factors as well as evaluated the importance of those factors for the availability of green spaces in cities. This is the first large-scale study on urban green space in the region, and the first using such a wide array of urban green space metrics.

Figure 1. Urban green space in large Latin American cities. A: The median of annual maximum NDVI in 2017 for 371 cities in 11 Latin American countries obtained from the MODIS NDVI satellite imagery. B-D: The distribution of green space in Lima (Peru), Buenos Aires (Argentina), and Teresopolis (Brazil) – their locations in Latin America marked by red circles in A. Each 30-meter pixel of green space in figures B-D is depicted in green; non-green space areas are in white.

The analysis revealed that the greatest variation in the amount and spatial configuration of urban green spaces and urban parks was associated with the climate zones in which cities are located. On average, arid cities had 14% less green space area compared to cities in tropical and temperate climate zones. Arid cities were characterized by higher fragmentation and lower clustering of greenery in space, yet offered greater availability of urban parks.

Regarding the built environment, more densely populated cities and cities with more street intersections were generally characterized by less UGS. These associations confirm previous research from other world regions, and highlight the need to consider UGS provision in future urban densification policies.

Finally, cities with favorable socioeconomic conditions tended to have greener landscapes, which is in line with prior research from the region.⁶ However, the study showed evidence of a U-shaped relationship between NDVI with city gross domestic product (GDP) and unemployment – suggesting that cities at the low and high ends of the socioeconomic spectrum were greener compared to socioeconomically ‘average’ cities. These findings are curious and call for further investigation of UGS services and/or disservices in cities with high and low socioeconomic development. While observed ample UGS in affluent cities is likely to reflect deliberate investments in, for example, high-quality urban parks, in economically disadvantaged cities UGS may manifest as undeveloped and/or neglected urban areas, which can lead to  community and ecosystem disservices (e.g., social disorder, pests, insects, pollen).^7,8  

One of the key conclusions from this research is that environmental factors, such as climate zones, largely dictate the overall availability of green spaces in a city. However, the provision of urban parks seems to be predominantly shaped by urban planning decisions. The dominance of climatic conditions in determining green space availability combined with the significant disparities in green space across Latin American cities poses challenges for advancing greening initiatives aimed at e.g., heat mitigation. Arid cities may not be able to expand green spaces because of harsh climate conditions, while already green cities may struggle to expand further because of limited space and other resources constraints. For such cities, addressing existing inequalities in green space distribution may be key to harnessing the benefits of green space to promote human well-being.

References

1. United Nations. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. (2015).

2. Flores, S., Van Mechelen, C., Vallejo, J. P. & Van Meerbeek, K. Trends and status of urban green and urban green research in Latin America. Landsc. Urban Plan. 227, 104536 (2022).

3. Dobbs, C. et al. Are we promoting green cities in Latin America and the Caribbean? Exploring the patterns and drivers of change for urban vegetation. Land Use Policy 134, 106912 (2023).

4. Bakhtsiyarava, M. et al. Potential drivers of urban green space availability in Latin American cities. Nat. Cities 1–11 (2024).

5. Quistberg, D. A. et al. Building a Data Platform for Cross-Country Urban Health Studies: the SALURBAL Study. J. Urban Health 96, 311–337 (2019).

6. Rigolon, A., Browning, M., Lee, K. & Shin, S. Access to Urban Green Space in Cities of the Global South: A Systematic Literature Review. Urban Sci. 2, 67 (2018).

7. Dobbs, C., Kendal, D. & Nitschke, C. R. Multiple ecosystem services and disservices of the urban forest establishing their connections with landscape structure and sociodemographics. Ecol. Indic. 43, 44–55 (2014).

8.Moran, M. R., Rodríguez, D. A., Cortinez-O’Ryan, A. & Jaime Miranda, J. Is self-reported park proximity associated with perceived social disorder? Findings from eleven cities in Latin America. Landsc. Urban Plan. 219, 104320 (2022).