Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeen
By Thomas Ansell
Humankind, the research centre that looks into livable cities, has just released its most recent survey into “Quantifying Urban Greenness in the Netherlands”, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the city of Groningen is the most green in the country! Aside from the natural air cleaning properties of urban greenspaces, recent research has shown that green cities are better suited to heat stress, have much more diverse fauna; and help de-stress residents.
Naturally, deciding which city is ‘greener’ is quite subjective, so the researchers at Humankind have used open-source data to map how much of a street is ‘greened’. Streets were then grouped into three strata of greeness: and though Tilburg narrowly edged out Groningen for the most ‘very green’ streets, the pride of the North shone through in the overall proportion.
According to the research, over half of Groningen’s streets are green (54 percent), whilst even the city centre has a favourable amount of greenery: with roads like the Ubbo Emmuissingel achieveing nearly 80 percent on the ‘green scale’.
The report can be read in English and Dutch here.
