Beyond burial: researching and managing cemeteries as urban green spaces, with examples from Canada

Abstract

Cemeteries existing within cities are often omitted from the “green space” narrative despite their high levels of vegetation. Given the relatively small areas of green space in many cities, it is important to appropriately manage these landscapes to ensure that residents can access green spaces and enjoy the many benefits they offer. The purpose of our paper is to demonstrate that cemeteries should be managed and researched as urban green spaces that provide ecosystem services. We compared and contrasted cemeteries with urban parks and used their similarities and differences, as well as a review of existing cemetery and other green-space literature, to discuss how cemeteries can provide a wide variety of ecosystem services. We found that cemeteries and parks both have high levels of vegetation, similar perceived safety issues, and some common rules and regulations, while differing in their consideration as public spaces, effect on real-estate values, historical–cultural value, and funding and management goals. Despite the differences, we believe that the vegetation (particularly trees), monuments, other infrastructure, and atmosphere within cemeteries make them well-suited to providing ecosystem services such as recreation, human health and restoration, stormwater management, microclimate regulation, aesthetics, and so on. Cemeteries can also potentially provide ecosystem “disservices” such as allergens, invasive/dangerous/poisonous species, and the degradation of groundwater quality. However, we believe that the potential for ecosystem services far outweighs the potential for ecosystem disservices in urban cemeteries, and as such we believe they should be studied and managed as green spaces with functions beyond those of interment and mourning. Given the general superiority of trees over other vegetation in providing a diversity of ecosystem services, we urge cemetery managers to consider options for increases and improvements in cemetery tree populations.