Urban Green Spaces Brief
September 2023
The AMALI Urban Governance Research Lab, composed of dedicated researchers, provides participating Mayors and Governors and their teams with tailored and exclusive research and analytics to support their transformation action plans. Additionally, the lab strives to enhance access to urban governance information and relevant research reflections on African cities to support urban governance improvements across the continent.
Contents of Urban Green Spaces brief
1. Introduction pg 2
2. Urbanisation in Africa and its environmental implications pg 2
3. Benefits and forms of urban green spaces pg 3
4. Some greening good practices in African cities pg 6
5. Guidelines for successful tree planting initiative: The right tree at the right place pg 11
6. Some guidelines for decision-makers to promote urban green spaces pg 12
7. Sources
1. Introduction
To achieve sustainable development goals, ecosystem degradation must be stopped and ecosystem restoration undertaken on a large scale. Accordingly, the United Nations (UN) has declared the years 2021-2030 to be the decade of ecosystem restoration. The decade offers significant opportunities for and challenges to restoration, in particular for Africa. Africa is urbanising rapidly, with a high incidence of informal urban sprawl on the natural landscape of cities. For cities to meet the needs of their residents, urban development needs a green perspective (Gulati & Scholtz 2020). Urban green spaces are part of this process, as they are essential to creating sustainable, healthy and liveable cities. Urban green spaces refer to areas within urban environments that are intentionally designed, developed, or preserved as natural or semi-natural spaces with vegetation, trees, plants, and open areas. This brief outlines some good practices for developing green spaces in African cities, with an emphasis on plant cover.