On average, cities meet the European target
Svetska zdravstvena organizacija traži najmanje 9 m² zelenila po stanovniku, a evropski gradovi teže ka 25 m². Svi mereni gradovi su iznad tog minimuma.
How much greenery there is per resident
Sorted from greenest to least green. The line on the bar is the World Health Organization minimum.
- 1 Bor 392 ha · 36,8% područja · ~1.176 kg čestica godišnje 122,5 m²/stan.
- 2 Užice 542 ha · 40,5% područja · ~1.626 kg čestica godišnje 98,5 m²/stan.
- 3 Kragujevac 709 ha · 28,5% područja · ~2.126 kg čestica godišnje 54,5 m²/stan.
- 4 Valjevo 271 ha · 20,4% područja · ~812 kg čestica godišnje 45,1 m²/stan.
- 5 Smederevo 252 ha · 19,1% područja · ~756 kg čestica godišnje 38,8 m²/stan.
- 6 Novi Sad 843 ha · 12,6% područja · ~2.530 kg čestica godišnje 32,4 m²/stan.
- 7 Beograd 2.288 ha · 15,3% područja · ~6.864 kg čestica godišnje 25,4 m²/stan.
- 8 Pančevo 147 ha · 7,0% područja · ~442 kg čestica godišnje 19,6 m²/stan.
- 9 Kraljevo 107 ha · 8,0% područja · ~321 kg čestica godišnje 16,4 m²/stan.
- 10 Niš 270 ha · 5,6% područja · ~809 kg čestica godišnje 13,5 m²/stan.
- 11 Zrenjanin 80 ha · 3,9% područja · ~241 kg čestica godišnje 11,5 m²/stan.
- 12 Subotica 92 ha · 3,1% područja · ~275 kg čestica godišnje 9,2 m²/stan.
Green spaces are counted from OpenStreetMap (parks, forests, lawns, and gardens) in a square around the city core, not across the whole municipality: we care about greenery among the buildings, not the forest behind the city.
What these numbers mean
- Most greenery per resident 122,5 m² Bor
- Least greenery per resident 9,2 m² Subotica
- One mature tree holds back each year ~20 kg of dust and as much CO₂
- For a city to gain a hectare of greenery ~2.000 seedlings and ten years
That is why every planting event matters: a hectare does not appear all at once, but out of hundreds of individual saplings that someone waters again the next summer.
How we calculate the green index
Why OpenStreetMap, not satellite
A satellite image sees a field and weeds as greenery too. We care about greenery the city knows by name and maintains: a park, a tree-lined street, a small wood, a garden. Such data is also verifiable, anyone can open the same map.
Why only the city core
We measure a rectangle around the densely populated part of the city. Had we taken the whole municipality, cities next to a mountain would come out the greenest in Europe because of forests that cool no one's street in the neighborhood.
Where the estimate for particles and CO₂ comes from
We use the lower bound from the technical literature on urban greenery, three kilograms of particles and three tons of carbon dioxide per hectare per year. We would rather promise less than what trees actually give.
What this list is not
It is not a grade for the city government or an official register of greenery. If a park that exists is missing in your city, it can be added in OpenStreetMap, and next week it will show up in the calculation.
A flower today. A garden tomorrow.
Your membership and your donation mean a new tree, a new workshop, and a greener city.