Creating a Map of the Social Functions of Urban Green Spaces in a City with Poor Availability of Spatial Data: A Sociotope for Lodz

Abstract

Many cities lack complex spatial databases that can answer the question “What does a given green space offer?” This complicates the lives of inhabitants, planners, and local authorities. One of the ways to obtain a complex picture of urban green spaces is to link multiple data sources. This article presents such an attempt to link multiple data sources to obtain a map of the social functions of urban green spaces in a city without a comprehensive spatial database on urban green spaces. We do so by adapting a method of mapping the social functions of urban green spaces—sociotope mapping—to the Central-Eastern European city of Lodz (Poland). Our results feature a map of the main social functions of urban green spaces (divided into five categories: nature, physical activity, social, play, and aesthetics) and GIS databases, with spatially explicit information on the 48 attributes of 196 urban green spaces in Lodz. According to our results, the greatest effort in sociotope mapping involves collecting data from different sources as it requires collaborating with various stakeholders—the owners of the data. Our study fits into the general trend of linking official data from municipal records with additional data on inhabitants’ preferences for urban green space planning and management.