Deriving audit-based green and blue space qualities to explore nature's affordances for wellbeing: an international perspective

Green and blue spaces (GBS) are widely recognised for their contributions to human health and wellbeing across urban, peri-urban, and rural environments. While urban planning commonly classifies GBS according to urban form, or function, these typologies alone do not adequately capture the qualities that influence people's experiences or subsequent wellbeing benefits these spaces can provide. We present a novel approach to classifying GBS based on their shared qualities and potential health and wellbeing affordances, rather than their physical type.

We applied principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis to more than 500 GBS’s audit data collected using the NEST+GreenME tool across nine socioeconomically deprived study areas in seven countries in Europe and USA. The audit assessed a broad range of environmental and social qualities, including recreation opportunities, accessibility, environmental justice, biodiversity, and other characteristics associated with the delivery of cultural ecosystem services and wellbeing.

The resulting clusters group spaces by shared qualities rather than conventional ‘urban typologies’. This quality-based classification reduces the complexity of correlated indicators, captures the potential health and wellbeing related affordances of GBS, and enables comparisons across diverse geographical contexts.

Our findings demonstrate the value of moving beyond traditional GBS typologies towards a benefits-based classification framework. The proposed clustering approach with distinct clusters (representing multifunctional spaces, versus those with heightened ecological or accessibility qualities amongst others) offers a transferable method for assessing GBS across multiple contexts and supports future research and planning aimed at improving equitable access to green and blue spaces that promote human health.