ABSTRACT
Official statistics estimate that by the year 2030, 80 per cent of the world’s people will live in urban conglomerations (United Nations 2006). In Europe this percentage will be reached by 2020, reaching peaks of 90 per cent in seven countries (EEA 2006). The increasing pace of the urbanization process and its sprawling pattern, described by the European Environment Agency as ‘the physical pattern of low-density expansion of large urban areas, mainly into the surrounding agricultural areas’, are particularly worrying phenomena, because of the many adverse environmental effects they generate (air pollution, soil degradation, resource consumption, etc.), and the negative impacts they have on the quality of life and well-being of millions of (urban and rural) citizens. The loss of green spaces as a consequences of urbanization challenges us to consider the importance of urban nature more closely (Pelkonen-Yli and Kohl 2005). The issue is not trivial, if we consider urban nature (parks, neighbourhood green spaces, and other semi-natural and un-built urban surfaces) not just as a mere residue of the urbanization process, waiting to be ‘used’ for some profitable purpose, but as a vital component of the larger urban mosaic, an everyday source of valuable services to citizens, a strategic resource for sustainable urban planning. The valuation of urban nature is even less trivial if we do it from an ecological economics point of view: the matter becomes then not a mere question of giving monetary figures to the value(s) and the benefits society gets from urban green areas, but it should also take into account who actually enjoys them, and it should look at whose values are taken into consideration. When attempting to value urban nature from an ecological economics point of view, one should be aware not only of the variety of beneficial services and values (social, economical and environmental) provided by nature in urban contexts, but also of the plurality of stakeholders involved (including citizens, planners, administrators, business, birds and plants) and – consequently – of the complexity of the legitimate perspectives that can be taken. Therefore, the central question to be asked is not only ‘How much is urban nature worth?’, but also ‘for whom?’ Thoughts from ecological economics suggest that technical and methodological argumentations about the best valuation approach to be applied cannot be separated from – or, better, it should not leave apart – ethical considerations and distributional aspects.
