More than green: Lessons for valuing green spaces for health and wellbeing

Headline: Value in green spaces is more subjective than just hours spent and activity types, it’s distinct from use and need, and must be discovered with each community.

Review Article: More than green: Lessons for valuing green spaces for health and wellbeing

Alexandra Gomes, Sara Luxmoore, Jeremy Morley, Robert Shaw, Iain Goodwin · Wellbeing, Space and Society · 2026 · https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wss.2026.100435

Themes: Green Infrastructure · Community Participation · Belonging · Social Value · Wellbeing

At Tranquil City, we’re interested in helping make the case for nature on our towns and cities. A key method in doing so is understanding the value that people attribute to their local green spaces, parklets, trees, historical elements, playgrounds, and other infrastructure they use on a daily basis. Investment can be more easily justified if we show who uses what, how often, and invest in delivering more of the things that people use regularly. But what if the things that people most value don’t always match up with the things that they use? Is investment just spent on things that people use, instead of being spent on things that people truly value in their communities, that boost wellbeing and belonging?

A new pilot study from LSE Cities, with Ordnance Survey and NHS England, puts a useful evidence base behind this question. Working across three parks in Haringey - Finsbury Park, Lordship Recreation Ground and Chestnuts Park - Gomes and colleagues adapt Pretty et al.'s (2003) sense of place framework to ask the question: what do residents actually value about their parks, and does that match what we currently measure?

This study makes a number of key conclusions, summarised below:

• Use, need and value are distinct and don’t always align, and objective measures, such as lighting, features, don’t capture the entire picture.

• Perceptions, such as for safety, biodiversity, sports provision, were found to matter more than objective measures, when leading to value-based outcomes. For example, perceived biodiversity is suggested to matter more for mental wellbeing that measured biodiversity.

• Residents rated ‘place-based’ features most highly, including a mix of socialising, play and sport uses, diversity of green and blue elements, and convenience, such as later opening hours, near to schools, high streets and religious spaces to fit as part routines.

• Unique features, such as the mini-traffic model in Lordship Recreation Ground, was shown to be valued for its history and aesthetics, despite having low use. This view was shared by park managers interviewed that highlighted a mismatch between local value of underused features.

• Residents also noted an importance in the need for community-focused elements and funding, as well as a need to improve agency in park-level decision making.

This article, despite its small size (80 participants), raised a few points for us to take into consideration. Importantly, it’s not saying that objective measures for evaluating green space value are wrong, they just should be used as proxies for more subjective values. Secondly, the paper emphasises the importance of listening to the local community’s own perspective on what is valuable to them, and measuring how their own voices, opinions and ideas – once transformed into delivered improvements - further increase and nurture values such as community, heritage, belonging and wellbeing for them and their community.

This matters for our partners, as it flags going beyond measuring use and activities only. Measures should include aspects such as belonging, sense of community, empowerment, and wellbeing, which despite them being subjective and ultimately variable, the solutions and investments made should best support improving these experiences/qualities for the community. 

Author: Grant Waters, Director, Tranquil City.

Date: Autumn 2026