A map shared on Twitter shows the amount of green space in Northern Ireland which is available to the public.
In general, based on the 2012 data, the area of publicly accessible green space per inhabitant tends to be higher in cities in northern European countries than in cities in southern and eastern European countries, with the exception of Poland, where public green space per inhabitant is also higher (Maes et al., 2019). Looking at capital cities in Europe (Figure 2), the data from the Urban Atlas 2018 suggests that the proportions of urban green space (i.e. accessible vegetated areas such as public gardens, parks, urban forests and cemeteries) are relatively low overall; nonetheless, some capitals (for example Stockholm, Dublin or Athens) tend to have higher proportions of such publicly available green space. An assessment based on 2012 data (Maes et al., 2019) suggests that less than half of Europe’s urban population lives within 300m of a park, with large differences across Europe. For example, while more than 80% of the population of Stockholm has access to a public park a short walk (300m) away, in Heraklion, Greece, under 20% enjoys such access.