Crete tourist guide

Heraklion - not too green city

2022-02-07 19:06:04

According to data published by the European Environment Agency, Heraklion took one of the last places in the ranking of the proximity of accessibility of green areas to residents. On the other hand, the highest (80%) indicator of the close availability of greenery was determined for the residents of Stockholm.
In the report entitled " Who uses greenery in cities? Social inequalities in access to urban green areas in Europe ”, data was collected on the tree cover of nearly 1,000 European cities located in 800 urban areas in 38 countries. The report includes data on 9 Greek cities, including the Cretan city of Heraklion.
This report was created as a result of the analysis of photos of cities from the European Copernicus satellite.

In Heraklion, numbering about 150 thousand. inhabitants (according to ELSTAT 2011) and covering an area of 52 km ² . trees cover only 8.96 km ² , or 17.22% of the city's area. Unfortunately, this result places Heraklion only in 715th place in the European ranking. As a consolation, it can be added that Heraklion is better in this statistic than Athens (905th place) or Thessaloniki (922th place).

In Greece, the greenest cities are Kalamata (54.45%), Kavala (44.64%), the worst results were in the cities of Larisa (5.57%) and Volos (4.92%).

If we also add all sports, recreation and parks to the area occupied by trees, Heraklion among Greek cities will still be in the lower part of the table (6th out of nine Greek cities), although it is slightly higher in the overall European statistics. As a curiosity, Athens took the second lowest position among all European capitals when it comes to the total area of green infrastructure.

The result of accessibility to generally understood green areas for city residents is also weak. The data shows that only 20% of Heraklion's inhabitants have access to an open green space located up to 300 meters from their place of residence.

Trees in urban areas provide many benefits to the urban environment and at the same time improve the quality of life in cities. It is enough to mention, for example, lowering the temperature, shading or reducing the wind speed. Leaving green spaces in cities also helps drain water from violent rainfall. The more trees and green spaces there are in cities, the more friendly they become to people, making their everyday life in concrete structures more enjoyable for them. What a pity that many of the cities explored in Greece have so little green space in their tissue. The lack of them is felt especially during summer heat waves, during which new temperature records are broken.

Gosia,  2022-02-07 19:06:04

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