Are urban green spaces optimally distributed to act as places for social integration? Results of a geographical information system (GIS) approach for urban forestry research

The objective of this ongoing research is to analyse the social potential of urban green spaces to create opportunities to integrate youths, elderly people, foreigners, unemployed and other social groups into the urban life of large Swiss agglomerations. Urban green-space data are linked with social demographic data for these particular social groups. Three large cities in the different language regions of Switzerland have been selected for a comparative study: Geneva (French-speaking), Lugano (Italian-speaking) and Zurich (German-speaking). The green-space data derived from vector25, the digital landscape model in a vector format of the Swiss Federal Office of Topography, and the social demographic data from the 1990 Swiss census are compiled for further processing with the geographical information systems ARCINFO and ARCVIEW. In this way, a contribution to the development of a GIS-based research methodology is made. The goal of this approach is to obtain a highly aggregated planning tool for urban forestry and green-space development. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.