Introduction

Submit the lab before July 14th 2025, 23:00

Urban green spaces (UGS) provide essential ecosystem services in ever densifying urban areas. They contribute to the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change, minimize the risks of natural disaster, and support biodiversity conservation by cooling, noise reduction and air filtration of pollutants. In particular, recreational services are beneficial for human health and well-being such provided by UGS as places of recreation, encounter or sport, social cohesion, and promoted physically activity (Reyer et al., 2014)1. On the one hand, the better UGS are accessible, the more people experience the associated benefits. On the other, the more people use UGS the higher the pressure on the services provided e.g. disturbed habitat functions, over-crowding and conflicts etc. (Wolff and Haase, 2019)2. Against this background, appropriate planning responses to this dilemma require robust analysis of the described trade-off. That’s the content of this lab.

Organization: The Lab will be developed individually: each student will work on a different district of the city of Leipzig (same procedure but different data). Please fill in your name in the following table https://box.hu-berlin.de/f/3371166cf6fc44059b11/.

Software used: The Lab is based on a mapping approach for which the software QGIS is used. It is installed on the server. If you want to work on your own device and don’t have QGIS installed, yet, please visit https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html

Submission of the lab report: The deadline is 14.07.2025, 23:00pm. Please upload your lab report to Moodle (named according to your group number e.g., 1_UGS_Report) and upload the data processed (all computed shape files including Isochrones and UGS_FINAL, packed in ZIP format and named according to your group number e.g., 1_UGS_Data) here: https://box.hu-berlin.de/u/d/c28ea981befd4e9cb04c/

Content of the lab report: The report should be 3-4 pages (including visual material but excluding annex or title page). You don’t need to repeat the method you applied. However, please briefly mention when you applied any workaround or method alternative. Your report should address the individual points highlighted as questions or tasks in the individual parts. It is required to produce at least 2 maps (see task 2 and question 1) and 1 graph (see question 2). However, this number can be exceeded when you feel you want to produce more in order to support your arguments.

  1. Reyer, M., Fina, S., Siedentop, S., and Schlicht, W. (2014). Walkability is only part of the story: walking for transportation in Stuttgart, Germany. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 11, 5849–5865. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph110605849↩︎

  2. Wolff, M., Haase, D. (2019). Mediating sustainability and liveability – turning points of green space supply in European cities. Frontiers in Environmental Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2019.00061.↩︎