Urban Green Space and Public Health: From Exposure to Equity

Rapid urbanization has intensified planetary health challenges—including urban heat islands, air pollution, and biodiversity loss—while simultaneously widening health disparities among urban populations. Urban green spaces (UGS) such as parks, greenways, community gardens, and urban forests are increasingly recognized as nature-based solutions and vital natural capital that promote physical activity, restore mental wellbeing, and mitigate climate-related health risks. Recent advances in geospatial technologies, wearable sensors, and big data have opened new avenues for measuring green space exposure with unprecedented precision. However, critical gaps remain: evidence on causal pathways is limited, non-linear dose-response threshold effects of green space coverage are poorly understood, and environmental injustice in green space quality persists across diverse socio-cultural contexts. Drawing inspiration from United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11, Target 11.7 (universal access to safe, inclusive green public spaces), this Research Topic aims to advance interdisciplinary knowledge on how urban green spaces can be strategically designed and governed to maximize equitable planetary health benefits. The goal of this Research Topic is to advance our understanding of the causal pathways, contextual moderators, and environmental justice implications linking urban green spaces to public health, and to translate this evidence into actionable guidance for urban planners, landscape architects, and policymakers. While positive associations between green space and health—including reduced cardiovascular disease, lower depression rates, and improved child development—are well documented, several critical challenges persist. Progress requires better integration of subjective and objective exposure assessment methodologies to capture actual green space use and quality. It also requires stronger causal evidence through longitudinal and quasi-experimental study designs, and a clearer understanding of non-linear dose-response threshold effects such as the minimum coverage levels that may accelerate population health benefits. Advancing this field further demands sustained attention to environmental justice and how intersectional vulnerabilities shape who benefits from green infrastructure, alongside deeper exploration of the synergies between climate adaptation and human health co-benefits. Suitable themes for manuscripts to address include: 1. Exposure assessment, big data, and methodological innovations — Examines how objective metrics (remote sensing, GIS, street-view imagery, GPS tracking, wearable sensors) and subjective measures can be integrated to capture meaningful green space exposure, actual use, landscape quality, and their links to health outcomes. 2. Causal mechanisms and pathways — Investigates the mediating roles of physical activity, social cohesion, stress reduction, air pollution mitigation, and heat reduction in the green space–health relationship, and how these pathways vary across population subgroups and urban contexts. 3. Threshold effects and dose-response relationships — Explores whether non-linear relationships exist between green space coverage and health benefits, and what optimal spatial distribution, size, and proximity of green spaces are needed to maximize population health outcomes. 4. Equity, environmental justice, and vulnerable populations — Evaluates disparities in access to high-quality, safe, and usable green spaces, and how children, older adults, individuals with disabilities, and those with chronic conditions differentially benefit from urban green infrastructure. 5. Urban green spaces and climate resilience — Investigates how green spaces can simultaneously support public health, heat mitigation, stormwater management, and biodiversity under climate change, and quantifies the health co-benefits of climate-adaptive green infrastructure interventions. 6. Green space interventions and natural experiments — Assesses the health impacts of real-world interventions—including park renovations, greenway development, and urban forestry initiatives—using quasi-experimental designs and longitudinal data to strengthen causal inference. 7. Landscape planning, evidence-based design, and participatory approaches — Examines how health evidence can be translated into landscape planning strategies and site-scale design guidelines through transdisciplinary collaboration among landscape architects, planners, and public health researchers. 8. Cross-cultural and comparative studies — Explores how cultural norms, urban form, governance structures, and socioeconomic contexts shape the green space–health association across cities and countries, with particular emphasis on low- and middle-income regions. 9. Economic valuation and cost-benefit analysis — Examines the economic returns on investment in urban green spaces from a public health perspective, and how health impact assessments can be integrated into municipal planning and funding decisions. We welcome contributions from diverse global contexts, particularly comparative studies and research addressing underrepresented regions in the Global South, to build a more inclusive evidence base for planetary health equity.Topic Editor Qunyue Liu serves as academic principal investigator for a commissioned project involving Fujian University of Technology (which administers the project and manages the research funds) and Fujian Leyi Ecological Technology Co., Ltd. (which is the commissioning and funding organization). The project and associated funds are unrelated to this Research Topic and Dr. Liu's role as Topic Editor. Topic editors: Zhipeng Zhu, You Peng, Jiaying Dong, Qunyue Liu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/83136/urban-green-space-and-public-health-from-exposure-to-equity