Open research questions in Urban Green Space and Health
1,604 gap statements mined from Urban Green Space and Health papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 5,163 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.
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What the literature leaves open
Coupled with this, embedding this study in mainstream schooling and centering student voice provides contextually relevant insights into the underexplored Australian primary education setting (Dean & Wenner, 2025).
Nature Play as a Catalyst for Outdoor Learning, Engagement and Wellbeing in Australian Primary Students · 2026 · DOIFuture research should consider employing qualitative methods, such as interviews or focus groups, to gain a deeper understanding of community perceptions and behaviors regarding the relationships between vandalism and plant attributes.
Many NbS projects still lack a strategic vision, focusing narrowly on individual sites without considering district- or city-scale systems. Future efforts must therefore emphasise systemic planning, stronger governance frameworks, and long-term stewardship structures that move beyond ad hoc or isolated project-based approaches. 4.2.
Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Regeneration: A Review of Methods, Governance, and Future Directions · 2026 · DOIFuture research could address these limitations by including larger and more diverse samples, using randomized or controlled designs, incorporating behavioral measures, and examining the long-term effects of participatory interventions on both care and usage behaviors.
Self-Build Practices on University Campus: Socio-Psychological Effects on Care and Intention to Spend Time in Outdoor Spaces · 2026 · DOIFuture research should focus on incorporating indoor plants in office settings with similar IEQ conditions, especially by using objective indicators to further investigate their effects on workers’ outcomes. A worker-centered approach that considers the selection of plant species with the potential to improve IAQ based on employees’ preferences may enhance occupant-related outcomes and warrants further investigation.
Nature-Based Solutions for Office Workers: A Randomized Controlled Trial on Indoor Plants to Enhance Well-Being and Productivity · 2026 · DOIResearch should explore ways to experiment with and to co-learn from nature-based interventions in educational settings in wider studies. Also, it is essential to investigate how to expand local governments’ commitment and involvement in the implementation of NBS more widely (both urban and rural settings).
How can nature-based solutions be used to support behavior to achieve sustainable cities? A proposed approach to designing and implementing interventions · 2026 · DOIThe relationships between individual micro-scale greenery components and short-timescale anxiety-related EEG responses remain unclear. Current research on mobile EEG measurement of environmental emotion is still in its infancy. There is a need to investigate the component contributions in university residential greenery scenes.
Routine greenery encounters and anxiety occurrence probability: a study of component contributions in university residential greenery scenes based on mobile electroencephalography data · 2026 · DOIFuture research is recommended to apply this study in this park as a prototype, evaluate it, and develop the scenarios to apply them in many parks in Riyadh.
Optimizing Urban Spaces: A Parametric Approach to Enhancing Outdoor Recreation Between Residential Areas in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia · 2025 · DOIFuture research should explore methods such as generalized additive models (GAMs) or structural equation modeling (SEM) to uncover deeper causal insights. First, the k-means clustering method may be limited by the dimensionality and coverage of the dataset, potentially leading to ambiguous classifications.
Prediction and Optimization of the Restoration Quality of University Outdoor Spaces: A Data-Driven Study Using Image Semantic Segmentation and Explainable Machine Learning · 2025 · DOIFor policymakers, keyword emergence and centrality analysis can help identify priority areas and support investment decisions; planners can optimize and multifunctionally design cities through clustering symbiotic relationships; and for communities, knowledge gap visualization supports fairness demands.
In future research, longitudinal designs or experimental studies could be utilized, and the causal relationships among variables could be further validated using crossover designs. Fourth, the present study did not distinguish between the relative impacts of duration and frequency of nature contact on the strength of nature connectedness, which could be further investigated in future studies.
How Does Nature Connectedness Improve Mental Health in College Students? A Study of Chain Mediating Effects · 2025 · DOIThis review emphasises the critical need to reassess plant selection strategies in urban greening projects, especially in light of climate change impacts.
Native vs. Non-Native Plants: Public Preferences, Ecosystem Services, and Conservation Strategies for Climate-Resilient Urban Green Spaces · 2025 · DOIFuture research could consider employing the SO-OMI algorithm (Semantic Orientation Pointwise Mutual Information) to construct a domain-specific sentiment lexicon for garden landscapes through model training for sentiment analysis, or combining it with qualitative analysis to enhance the accuracy and depth of sentiment interpretation.
Empirical Study on Emotional Perception and Restorative Effects of Suzhou Garden Landscapes: Text Mining and Statistical Analysis · 2025 · DOIThis the first significant research gap we identified that remains to be filled but which would provide significant benefits to growth of the urban forest and climate resilience efforts in cities. Similarly, limited knowledge around public views on tree ordinances may limit the protection of mature street trees in cities undergoing significant redevelopment and densification.
A Review of Residents’ Perceptions of Urban Street Trees: Addressing Ambivalence to Promote Climate Resilience · 2025 · DOIOur results show that socio-cultural variables mediate the constraints for children and youth in their engagement with nature, and regarding green justice, this is something that should be studied more in future research.
Children’s Nature Use and Related Constraints: Nationwide Parental Surveys from Norway in 2013 and 2023 · 2025 · DOIHowever, studies demonstrating the positive effects of UGS and its public perception of services and disservices are relatively scarce in an Amazonian context.
Patterns of Visitor Perception of Services and Disservices in Urban Green Spaces: Insights from a Fast-Growing City in the Peruvian Amazon · 2026 · DOIThe territorial differences observed among urban parishes also align with the environmental justice literature, which has shown that inequalities in green and public space provision are not limited to access or proximity, but also include differences in size, quality, amenities, and perceived usability.
Spatial Inequalities in Public Space Quality: A GIS-Based Multi-Attribute Composite Index for Urban Planning in an Intermediate Latin American City · 2026 · DOIThe findings are as follows: (1) Space Quality: The district demonstrates notable strengths in public facility convenience, sky visibility, and interface openness, while the green visibility requires improvement. It is recommended to optimize the greening layout through diverse strategies such as vertical green walls, landscaped flowerbeds, and rooftop gardens.
A Cognition–Affect–Behavior Framework for Assessing Street Space Quality in Historic Cultural Districts and Its Impact on Tourist Experience · 2025 · DOIAnother issue that has been under researched is the relation between UGI and urban inequality. Critically, citizen-led work on green infrastructure has been inadequately documented in the academic literature, despite its potential contribution to inclusive governance practices.
The Green Blueprint: Designing Future Cities with Urban Green Infrastructure and Ecosystem Services in the UK · 2025 · DOIGreening the City with the 3–30–300 Rule: A Spatial Justice Perspective on Housing Governance and Green Gentrification Soha Aliakbari 1 and Alessio Russo 2,3,* 1 Department of Urban Planning and Geography, Islamic Azad University, Tehran North Branch, 2 Tehran 1651153511, Iran School of Architecture and Built Environment, Faculty of Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD 4000, Australia 3…
Greening the City with the 3–30–300 Rule: A Spatial Justice Perspective on Housing Governance and Green Gentrification · 2026 · DOIThe study had a limited sample size, - The experiment was conducted in a lab setting, - The physiological analyses were primarily exploratory, - The study did not test strong a priori physiological…
Multimodal IVR framework for pre-intervention assessment of tree-abundance manipulations in historic garden heritage sites · 2026 · DOIFurther research could investigate the effects of different tree abundance strategies on user experience, - Future studies could explore the application of IVR in other heritage sites, - Research could also examine the impact of IVR on stakeholder communication…
Multimodal IVR framework for pre-intervention assessment of tree-abundance manipulations in historic garden heritage sites · 2026 · DOIInsufficient research on the psychologically restorative potential of different types of university common spaces and their constituent elements considered systematically Most existing studies have focused on the psychologically restorative potential of individual campus spaces and specific elements, with insufficient examination of how common-space characteristics and constituent elements collectively influence…
University common spaces and students’ psychological restoration: a scoping review of environmental characteristics, restorative outcomes, and potential pathways · 2026 · DOIInvestigating the relationships between individual micro-scale greenery components and short-timescale anxiety-related EEG responses in different environments. Examining the effects of thermal comfort on AOP. Studying the neural detection of environmental quality and its experimental verification.
Routine greenery encounters and anxiety occurrence probability: a study of component contributions in university residential greenery scenes based on mobile electroencephalography data · 2026 · DOIFor example, reported that a survey conducted in Toronto, Canada, and Philadelphia, PA, USA, found that most responders were unfamiliar with the term ’green infrastructure’ and had limited knowledge of green infrastructure…
Green Infrastructure and Climate Resilience of Urban Neighborhoods: What Can the Citizens Do Together? · 2025 · DOI
Most-cited papers in Urban Green Space and Health
- Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments · Journal of Environmental Psychology · 1991 · 4,762 citations
- Urban green space, public health, and environmental justice: The challenge of making cities ‘just green enough’ · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2014 · 3,734 citations
- Nature and Health · Annual Review of Public Health · 2014 · 3,056 citations
- Urban greening to cool towns and cities: A systematic review of the empirical evidence · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2010 · 2,680 citations
- Promoting ecosystem and human health in urban areas using Green Infrastructure: A literature review · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2007 · 2,303 citations
- The role of urban parks for the sustainable city · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2003 · 1,907 citations
- Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation? · Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health · 2006 · 1,552 citations
- How the built environment affects physical activity · American Journal of Preventive Medicine · 2002 · 1,403 citations
- The Uncertain Geographic Context Problem · Annals of the Association of American Geographers · 2012 · 1,253 citations
- Restorative Effects of Natural Environment Experiences · Environment and Behavior · 1991 · 1,136 citations
Most recent work
- From quantity to visual quality: Unraveling nonlinear thresholds of campus nature exposure for precision mental health restoration · Building and Environment · 2026
- Your brain on nature: A scoping review of the neuroscience of nature exposure · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · 2026
- Nature-Based Solutions in Urban Regeneration: A Review of Methods, Governance, and Future Directions · Urban Science · 2026
- Unveiling the mechanisms linking urban plant diversity to human physiology health · Cities · 2026
- Toward equitable green spaces: Spatial patterns and determinants of accessibility and inequality across 314 Chinese cities · Cities · 2026
- Seeing green, staying longer? A causal analysis of visual green exposure and urban park engagement using mobility and panoramas data · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2026
- Unraveling threshold effects and hierarchical mechanisms of spatial mismatch between urban environment and subjective well-being in megacities · Landscape and Urban Planning · 2026
- Estimation of carbon storage and influencing factors for urban green spaces: a view of green space types and plant community structure · Frontiers in Environmental Science · 2026
- Human-centered collaborative design in green buildings: A comprehensive review of neurotechnology integration · Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews · 2026
- Socio‐demographic and geographical patterns in forest and park use: Insights from 33 European countries · People and Nature · 2026
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