Assessment of urban green space in Suwon special city: focusing on everyday nature spaces in neighborhood level

Abstract Urban green spaces are essential resources directly linked to citizens’ quality of life, providing a wide range of ecosystem services. However, existing policies and research have primarily focused on quantitative indicators such as area, while overlooking the qualitative values as experienced by residents. This study aims to bridge this gap by integrating quantitative indicators (green space ratio) with structural indicators representing qualitative aspects (spatial configuration), to examine how everyday encounters with green spaces influence citizens’ satisfaction with ecosystem services. Focusing on Suwon Special City, the study calculated neighborhood-level green space ratios using the Moving Window technique and assessed structural characteristics based on landscape ecology–derived Landscape Metrics. In particular, the study included not only commonly recognized green spaces such as parks and forests, but also apartment greens, urban farmlands, and rivers, thereby capturing the full spectrum of everyday nature experiences. By comparing spatial indicators between groups with high and low satisfaction levels for each ecosystem service function, the study identified the effects of factors such as cohesion, connectivity, and fragmentation beyond simple green area. The analysis revealed differentiated relationships by function: experience-based services such as “ecological experience and education” and “recreation” were strongly influenced by the spatial structure of green spaces, whereas “regulation of climate and disaster” showed a weaker association at the neighborhood scale. These findings suggest that future urban green space planning should move beyond quantitative expansion toward function-based spatial strategies to enhance perceived quality and functional performance.