White Paper on Sustainability of Spanish Urban Planning -- 2.3 Favour access to nature (green areas)

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White Paper on Sustainability of Spanish Urban Planning
José Fariña Tojo, José Manuel Naredo (directors)

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2.3 Favour access to nature (green areas)

2.31. Define a minimum size for green areas (per person, home, etc.)
This is a question of making it compulsory to respect a minimum standard for green areas. For example it can depend on the number of homes, of inhabitants or the built up area in square metres.

2.32. Define criteria for the form and minimum size of green areas
Any requirement to the shape of green areas should be included in this section. As it is a design indicator the difficulty of legislating on this matter can be understood.

2.33. Foster biodiversity
Although with some hesitation any article in which mention is made of biodiversity without specifying the city or nature is included, as when it is linked directly to nature it is included in point 1.01. There are very few mentions related to urban land as, apparently, its consideration is not very important in the case of cities compared to the magnitude of biodiversity in natural areas less influenced by humans. Although this is an evident error denounced by many authors: the introduction of diversity in buildings, in trees and plants (for example) is a necessary and prior step in order to achieve complexity in the cities.

2.34. Introduce green networks on neighbourhood and city scales
Frequently confusing scale arrangements make it impossible to create green networks, where their different natural constituents would require specific care.

2.35. Favour public access to green areas
In some cases in this section quite varied references to green areas have been introduced and therefore this criterion is probably not very reliable.

2.36. Incorporate trees and plants into public spaces
As is the foregoing case with this indicator varied references to green areas and trees and plants have been introduced. Therefore this criterion is probably not very reliable.

2.37. Connect different green areas ecologically
As there could be some overlapping with the point Connect the various protected areas of the Connect the various protected areas section it was decided to revise the two areas together. The problem is especially likely to appear in peri-urban spaces where there may be protected zones already considered when analyzing the first point. In any case this parallel revision has shown that the said overlapping in reality did not exist as there are very few mentions in the legislation to this topic.

Discussion

With exception of the case of the criterion related to defining a minimum standard for green areas there are very few mentions of this criterion in the legislation. As for a minimum green surface area it is not surprising that this issue does not come up in the majority of Community legislations. It has been a very traditional standard in this country since the earliest urban planning legislation. The problem is that the definition of standard has become merely a consideration of the minimum space dedicated to green areas without relating this space to the type of green area or its characteristics. No demands are made for certain conditions of sustainability, for example, water consumption, or relating the green area to the climatic conditions or land area. In certain cases it would be recommendable if the standard not only referred to a minimum space but that also it dealt with maximums, unless certain sustainability conditions were imposed, for example that these areas were designed with more self-sustaining forestation criteria rather than just gardening criteria. In special climatic zones (such as the semi-arid part of our country) the understanding that a green area is in reality a green carpet made up of grass should lead to limitations on its maximum size being imposed.

For the rest of the criteria of this section the references in the legislation are very scarce, with the possible exception of state legislation and the laws of the Canary Islands and, in part, the Valencia Region. This is because in some communities they are considered as questions of design, to which we have referred to in other sections, and in other communities because they have not even been considered worthy of mention.