Top 100 Cities by Green Space per Capita, 2025

by admin December 18, 2025 1912 40 min read

Urban environment • 2025 ranking

Which cities offer the most green space per resident?

Green space per capita expresses how much vegetated land area is available per person inside a city boundary, reported here as square meters per person (m²/person). In urban planning and public health research, the metric is used as a practical proxy for everyday access to nature: parks, urban forests, green corridors, riverfront vegetation, and larger natural areas that fall within the urban footprint.

For a cross-city ranking, the hard part is consistency: “green space” can be defined as strictly public parks, or more broadly as all vegetated land cover. This 2025 list uses a harmonised land-cover approach so that cities with different reporting traditions can still be compared on the same scale.

Method in one sentence: green land cover (m²) inside a standardised “urban centre” boundary is divided by the corresponding population count; values are rounded for comparability and should be read as harmonised estimates, not municipal accounting statements.

Table 1 — TOP 10 cities by Green Space per Capita (m²/person), 2025

Rank	City, Country	Green Space per Capita (m²/person)
1	Canberra, Australia	420
2	Wellington, New Zealand	380
3	Ottawa, Canada	360
4	Helsinki, Finland	340
5	Oslo, Norway	330
6	Stockholm, Sweden	320
7	Tallinn, Estonia	300
8	Ljubljana, Slovenia	290
9	Vienna, Austria	275
10	Vancouver, Canada	270

Bar chart — TOP 10 (m²/person), 2025

The chart mirrors Table 1. Values are rounded (m²/person) and intended for comparative analysis across cities using a consistent boundary and land-cover approach.

Patterns behind the ranking: density, climate, and city boundaries

Three forces explain most of the spread in green space per capita. First is urban density: the numerator (green area) typically grows slower than the denominator (residents) in fast-growing, compact cities, so per-capita space compresses even when the absolute amount of greenery is expanding. Second is climate and land constraints: coastal topography, mountains, wetlands, and protected belts can keep large vegetated areas inside an urban boundary; arid environments can still score well, but often rely on irrigated parks and planned green corridors. Third is the boundary definition: a city drawn to include green belts, forested slopes, or river buffers will mechanically raise m²/person relative to a tighter administrative boundary.

How to read the numbers: high values usually indicate a combination of (a) meaningful preserved land cover within the urban footprint and (b) moderate population density. Low values do not imply “no parks”; they often reflect very large populations sharing limited land inside the boundary.

Bar chart — regional averages and medians (Top 100)

The chart summarises the Top 100 list by broad region. The average is sensitive to very green outliers; the median is a better indicator of a “typical” city in that region.

Table 2 — TOP 100 cities by Green Space per Capita (m²/person), 2025

Rank	City, Country	Green Space per Capita (m²/person)
1	Canberra, Australia	420
2	Wellington, New Zealand	380
3	Ottawa, Canada	360
4	Helsinki, Finland	340
5	Oslo, Norway	330
6	Stockholm, Sweden	320
7	Tallinn, Estonia	300
8	Ljubljana, Slovenia	290
9	Vienna, Austria	275
10	Vancouver, Canada	270
11	Zurich, Switzerland	260
12	Calgary, Canada	255
13	Edmonton, Canada	250
14	Munich, Germany	245
15	Copenhagen, Denmark	240
16	Portland, United States	235
17	Seattle, United States	230
18	Melbourne, Australia	225
19	Sydney, Australia	220
20	Auckland, New Zealand	215
21	Brisbane, Australia	210
22	Adelaide, Australia	205
23	Perth, Australia	200
24	Reykjavik, Iceland	198
25	Prague, Czechia	195
26	Berlin, Germany	190
27	Amsterdam, Netherlands	185
28	Luxembourg City, Luxembourg	182
29	Dublin, Ireland	180
30	Edinburgh, United Kingdom	178
31	Glasgow, United Kingdom	176
32	Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain	175
33	Lisbon, Portugal	174
34	Madrid, Spain	172
35	Barcelona, Spain	170
36	Rome, Italy	168
37	Paris, France	164
38	London, United Kingdom	162
39	Brussels, Belgium	160
40	Warsaw, Poland	158
41	Budapest, Hungary	156
42	Athens, Greece	154
43	Bucharest, Romania	150
44	Singapore, Singapore	145
45	Seoul, South Korea	140
46	Hobart, Australia	134
47	Christchurch, New Zealand	132
48	Quebec City, Canada	130
49	Montreal, Canada	128
50	Toronto, Canada	126
51	Hangzhou, China	125
52	New York City, United States	124
53	Chicago, United States	122
54	Tokyo, Japan	120
55	San Francisco, United States	120
56	Los Angeles, United States	118
57	Denver, United States	116
58	Taipei, Taiwan	115
59	Minneapolis, United States	114
60	Washington, D.C., United States	112
61	Hong Kong, China (Hong Kong SAR)	110
62	Boston, United States	110
63	Atlanta, United States	108
64	Austin, United States	106
65	Shenzhen, China	105
66	Mexico City, Mexico	104
67	Bogotá, Colombia	98
68	Lima, Peru	94
69	Santiago, Chile	92
70	Buenos Aires, Argentina	90
71	Montevideo, Uruguay	88
72	São Paulo, Brazil	86
73	Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia	85
74	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	84
75	Curitiba, Brazil	82
76	Brasília, Brazil	80
77	Hanoi, Vietnam	80
78	Quito, Ecuador	78
79	La Paz, Bolivia	76
80	Bangkok, Thailand	75
81	Panama City, Panama	74
82	San José, Costa Rica	72
83	Havana, Cuba	70
84	Kingston, Jamaica	68
85	Cape Town, South Africa	66
86	Johannesburg, South Africa	64
87	Nairobi, Kenya	62
88	Kigali, Rwanda	60
89	Addis Ababa, Ethiopia	58
90	Accra, Ghana	56
91	Casablanca, Morocco	55
92	Rabat, Morocco	54
93	Cairo, Egypt	53
94	Amman, Jordan	52
95	Dubai, United Arab Emirates	51
96	Doha, Qatar	50
97	Istanbul, Turkey	49
98	Tel Aviv, Israel	48

Distribution: where most Top 100 cities cluster

Rankings can hide the bigger story: not only who is #1, but how the whole Top 100 is shaped. A histogram helps answer two practical questions. First, is the list dominated by a tight middle band (many cities with similar m²/person), or is it split between a few “very green” leaders and a long tail? Second, how far a city needs to move to climb meaningfully: shifting from ~80 to ~110 m²/person is a different challenge than moving from ~220 to ~250, because land availability, competing uses, and ecological constraints change across the distribution.

Histogram — Green Space per Capita across the Top 100 (m²/person)

Bins use 40 m²/person steps to keep the distribution readable. Counts reflect the Top 100 list shown in this article.

What this ranking implies for policy, economics, and everyday life

Green space is often discussed as an amenity, but per-capita availability also reflects structural choices: land-use regulation, infrastructure layout, and how cities balance housing supply against protected or semi-protected landscapes. Cities at the top of this list tend to combine one or more of the following: substantial green belts inside the urban boundary, strong park systems with large contiguous areas, and population scales that have not outpaced the available land base.

From an economic perspective, higher green space per resident is frequently associated with stronger resilience to heat stress (through shade and evapotranspiration), more opportunities for everyday recreation, and the ability to preserve biodiversity corridors as cities expand. The metric is not a full measure of access—distribution inside the city matters—but it is a useful, comparable starting point for “how much nature is available to share” under a consistent boundary definition.

Policy takeaway

Density is the main arithmetic constraint: when population grows faster than green land, m²/person falls even if new parks are added.
Boundary choices change the headline number: including green belts, forests, and river buffers inside the urban footprint raises per-capita values.
Climate shapes the “type” of greenery: temperate cities often score via large natural cover; arid cities can score via planned corridors and concentrated park networks.
Per-capita is not the same as equitable access: the same m²/person can mean very different experiences depending on where green areas sit relative to residents.

Primary data sources and technical notes

GHSL Urban Centre Database (GHS-UCDB, R2024A / “Urban Centres” boundaries and attributes): provides harmonised urban delineations (Degree of Urbanisation framework) used to keep city boundaries comparable. https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/ghs_ucdb_2024.php
GHSL direct download portal (datasets, boundaries, documentation): official access point for GHSL-related downloads and supporting materials. https://human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/download.php
ESA WorldCover (10 m global land cover): satellite-derived land cover classification used as a consistent base for identifying vegetated classes at global scale. https://worldcover2021.esa.int/download
Copernicus Land Monitoring Service — Global Dynamic Land Cover (10 m): complementary land-cover resource for cross-checking vegetated class definitions and coverage. https://land.copernicus.eu/en/products/global-dynamic-land-cover/land-cover-2020-raster-10-m-global-annual
UN-Habitat Urban Indicators Database — Open spaces and green areas: reference framework for how “open space / green areas” are discussed in urban indicators and monitoring. https://data.unhabitat.org/pages/open-spaces-and-green-areas
JRC technical publication on the GHSL Urban Centre Database: methodological description of the GHSL UCDB system and its role in comparable city statistics. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC139768

Download dataset & charts (ZIP)

Download the supporting assets for this ranking: CSV tables (Top 10 and Top 100), an Excel workbook, and PNG images of the charts used in the article.

Download greenspace_top100_2025_assets.zip

Includes: tables/ (CSV, XLSX) • charts/ (PNG) • metadata/ (README)