The Use of Socio-Environmental Indicators to Assess the Needs Relating to the Development of Urban Greenery

Areas covered with vegetation play a key role in life on Earth and should be inventoried in a clear and complete manner in order to improve the process of their protection and development. Data showing the amount of greenery in areas most deformed by humans, i.e., urbanized areas, are particularly important. Local governments need to know how to invest their limited resources in the quality of life of residents by supplementing the urban fabric with additional vegetation. Unfortunately, there are currently few proposals in the scientific literature that would allow us to uniformly determine the amount of greenery resources in different cities. This article presents a proposal for how to calculate the degree of greenness of cities based on remote sensing data. Additionally, a novel method, including 3 new spatial indicators, was proposed to help in planning the development of areas covered with vegetation, taking into account the spatial distribution of the local population. Results were calculated for the city of Lodz (Poland) using a comprehensive method, which employs original formulas based on satellite and LiDAR data to present the actual natural situation in a specific city. In consequence, the results showed a similar area of green areas as the official repositories, but these areas were much more dispersed than these public databases would suggest.