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The understanding of urban social-ecological systems requires integrated and interdisciplinary methods. This paper explores differences in the accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS) based on urban morphology. In contrast to other comparative analyses that followed simplified quantification of UGS provision and/or omitted the impact of morphological properties of urban space, this study proposes three improvements. First, it uses the share of UGS in the service area of 300 m walking distance around each residential building in a city as a measure of UGS provision. Second, it includes the potential physical accessibility of UGS as warranted by key actors, such as owners or managers, who decide whether UGS are open or not to potential users. Third, it links UGS accessibility and heterogeneous urban structures. We developed a mixed-methods analysis that combines multiple data sources regarding UGS, the spatial distribution of residential buildings, and street networks. We conducted our analysis in five case-study cities (Barcelona, Halle, Lodz, Oslo, and Stockholm). Our findings suggest that the urban structures where the human–environment interaction transformed the space (such as in the core city areas) are characterized by limited UGS in the service area. Urban structures that are less transformed by human activity (especially suburbia) have the highest share of selected UGS in the service area. In addition, even if the share of UGS in the service area is high, many of them might have limited physical accessibility. In the broader sense, this highlights that social-ecological processes are linked to urban form and cannot be separated in an analysis. Therefore, social-ecological systems could be better understood through the lens of urban morphology. GIS; land use; landscape metrics; social-ecological systems; spatial analysis; urban green space management

Understanding opportunities as well as constraints for people to benefit from and take care of urban nature is an importantstep toward more sustainable cities. In order to explore, engage, and enable strategies to improve urban quality of life, we combine asocial-ecological-technological systems framework with a flexible methodological approach to urban studies. The framework focuseson context dependencies in the flow and distribution of ecosystem service benefits within cities. The shared conceptual system frameworksupports a clear positioning of individual cases and integration of multiple methods, while still allowing for flexibility for aligning withlocal circumstances and ensuring context-relevant knowledge. To illustrate this framework, we draw on insights from a set of exploratorycase studies used to develop and test how the framework could guide research design and synthesis across multiple heterogeneous cases.Relying on transdisciplinary multi- and mixed methods research designs, our approach seeks to both enable within-case analyses andsupport and gradually build a cumulative understanding across cases and city contexts. Finally, we conclude by discussing key questionsabout green and blue infrastructure and its contributions to urban quality of life that the approach can help address, as well as remainingknowledge gaps both in our understanding of urban systems and of the methodological approaches we use to fill these gaps QC 20211129

Modelling walking distance enables the observation of non-linearities in hedonic property pricing of accessibility to greenspace. We test a penalized spline spatial error model (PS-SEM), which has two distinctive features. First, the PS-SEM controls for the presence of a spatially autocorrelated error term. Second, the PS-SEM allows for continuous non-linear distance decay of the property price premium as a function of walking distance to greenspaces. As a result, compared with traditional spatial econometric methods, the PS-SEM has the advantage that data determines the functional form of the distance decay of the implicit price for greenspace accessibility. Our PS-SEM results from Oslo, Norway, suggest that the implicit price for greenspace access is highly non-linear in walking distance, with the functional form varying for different types of greenspaces. Our results caution against using simple linear distances and assumptions of log or stepwise buffer-based distance decay in property prices relative to pedestrian network distance to urban amenities. The observed heterogeneity in the implicit property prices for walking distance to greenspace also provides a general caution against using non-spatial hedonic pricing models when aggregating values of greenspace amenities for policy analysis or urban ecosystem accounting purposes. Penalized spline spatial error model (PS-SEM) Hedonic pricing method (HPM) Urban ecosystem services valuation Urban ecosystem accounting Urban planning Environmental justice