It is surprisingly difficult to rank European cities by greenery. There are many ways of calculating green spaces. There are public parks and forests, but should private gardens also be taken into account for the overall greenery? For big cities are we talking just about the city centre or the whole city with the suburbs?
Here are the 15 greenest cities in Europe by percentage of green spaces.
The chart below shows the percentage of total green infrastructure, urban green space, and urban tree cover in the area of EEA-38 capital cities according to the European Environment Agency.
This map shows the surface area of publicly accessible green space per inhabitant across European cities (source: EEA). We can clearly see that the northern half of Europe is much greener than the southern half.
Another way of calculating which cities are the greenest is to take into account the quality of green spaces and parks as well as air quality and pollution. The ranking below went even further by taking into account the total number of jobs in sustainability and the monthly cost of public transport.
Another way of looking at it is to check only the number of public parks. Here is the ranking of large European cities with the highest number of public green parks.
Here are the 15 greenest cities in Europe by percentage of green spaces.
- Oslo, Norway: 72%
- Zagreb, Croatia: 72%
- Helsinki, Finland: 62%
- Vilnius, Lithuania: 57%
- Prague, Czechia: 56%
- Grenoble, France: 55%
- Bern, Switzerland: 53%
- Geneva, Switzerland: 52%
- Ljubljana, Slovenia: 50%
- Gothenburg, Sweden: 48%
- Stockholm, Sweden: 46%
- Madrid, Spain: 45%
- Vienna, Austria: 43%
- Edinburgh, UK: 42%
- Bratislava, Slovakia: 41%
The chart below shows the percentage of total green infrastructure, urban green space, and urban tree cover in the area of EEA-38 capital cities according to the European Environment Agency.
This map shows the surface area of publicly accessible green space per inhabitant across European cities (source: EEA). We can clearly see that the northern half of Europe is much greener than the southern half.
Another way of calculating which cities are the greenest is to take into account the quality of green spaces and parks as well as air quality and pollution. The ranking below went even further by taking into account the total number of jobs in sustainability and the monthly cost of public transport.
Another way of looking at it is to check only the number of public parks. Here is the ranking of large European cities with the highest number of public green parks.
- London - 3,000
- Berlin - 2,500
- Vienna - 2,000
- Hamburg - 1,460
- Paris - 480
- Dublin - 303
- Prague - 200
- Barcelona - 114
- Marseille - 68
- Rome - 63
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