The way we manage urban green space is changing, but the way people perceive it isn’t changing at the same pace. Bringing these two perspectives closer together is the starting point for building a new way of caring for our towns and cities.
«The trees have grown far too big. One day a branch will fall and there’ll be a tragedy.»
«They haven’t cut the grass in the park for weeks. The whole place has been left to go wild.»
«The tree pits are full of weeds. The council doesn’t clean them anymore.»
These are common complaints received by municipal parks and gardens departments. Often, however, they respond to management decisions that are technically justified.
A large tree is not necessarily a hazardous tree: keeping healthy specimens with broad canopies is key to providing shade and regulating the temperature of public space. Mowing meadows less often supports biodiversity and allows plants to complete their flowering and seeding cycles. And allowing spontaneous vegetation in certain tree pits creates microhabitats for pollinators.
Three everyday situations that point to the same reality: the technical criteria for managing urban green space do not always match people’s idea of a well-maintained public space. This gap poses a twofold challenge for local councils: transforming management to respond to the climate emergency while making sure that people understand and value the decisions being made.
Urban green space as strategic infrastructure
The climate emergency and biodiversity loss force us to rethink our cities. It is not enough to adapt them to higher temperatures, prolonged droughts or episodes of heavy rain: they must also play an active role in mitigation and in restoring biodiversity.
In this context, urban green space stops being an ornamental feature and becomes green infrastructure. Trees, parks, meadows, naturalised areas and permeable soils provide specific ecosystem services: temperature regulation, carbon capture and storage, lower energy demand in buildings, rainwater management and habitat for wildlife.
The European regulatory framework already recognises this. Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 on nature restoration states that, by 31 December 2030, Member States must ensure there is no net loss in the total national area of urban green space and of urban tree canopy cover compared with 2024, subject to the exceptions provided for, and that from 2031 onwards these areas must follow an increasing trend.
Renaturalisation is no longer a voluntary initiative; it is now part of Europe’s nature restoration commitments. Meeting them does not only require increasing green space: it means reviewing how that space is planned, designed and, above all, managed.
Renaturalising: from aesthetic management to ecological management
Renaturalising means giving space back to nature and helping urban ecosystems perform their ecological functions: healthy trees with enough soil volume and space to develop their canopy, living and permeable soils, flowering meadows, a wider range of species, habitats for pollinators and ecological connectivity between green spaces.
También implica revisar prácticas de mantenimiento consolidadas: reducir la frecuencia de siega en determinadas zonas, evitar podas innecesarias, ajustar el riego a las necesidades hídricas reales, reducir el uso de fitosanitarios y respetar la fenología de las especies.
This does not mean stopping intervention, but intervening with better judgement. Differentiated management requires technical knowledge, planning, monitoring and actions tailored to each space.
The challenge is to reconcile ecological functions with safety, the upkeep of infrastructure and people’s needs. We are moving from management focused on order, aesthetics and controlling vegetation to management that takes biodiversity and the functioning of ecosystems into account. But public expectations of what a well-kept green space looks like are not evolving at the same pace.
Technical criteria and public expectations: where the mismatch happens
A tree with a fully developed canopy is an environmental asset for the city. For the resident who has it outside their window, the same tree may seem too big, block their light or make them feel unsafe.
Los equipos técnicos deciden a partir del estado fitosanitario, la estabilidad estructural, la biodiversidad y la funcionalidad de los espacios. La ciudadanía evalúa esas mismas decisiones desde su experiencia cotidiana, las molestias que percibe y sus expectativas de mantenimiento del espacio público.
Often, the most technically appropriate decision is not to intervene, or to do so in a barely visible way. And that is precisely the hardest one to explain.
This does not mean that residents’ concerns are unfounded. Roots that lift paving, branches that interfere with homes or certain pests are real problems that need a technical response. The challenge is to tell apart the situations that call for intervention from those where the conflict arises from a misunderstanding or from not knowing the management criteria.
What the research says: acceptance depends on knowledge
There is an underlying contradiction: we want to restore urban biodiversity, yet we still associate a well-kept space with mown lawns, trimmed shrubs and tree pits without a single weed. Scientific research has documented this.
- Support for biodiversity, with an expectation of order. Fischer et al. (2020), in Conservation Letters, analysed the views of 2,027 people from 19 cities in nine European countries on replacing conventional lawns with naturalised meadows. They found broad support for biodiversity-friendly practices, but also a deep-rooted expectation that green spaces should look tidy and cared for. Support was higher among people who had a better understanding of biodiversity and felt responsible for conserving it.
- Los beneficios percibidos, principal factor de aceptación. Frank et al. (2024), en Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, encuestaron a 899 personas de Alemania, Austria y Suiza sobre la transformación de céspedes en prados favorables a los insectos. La aceptación general era elevada, y el factor con más peso era el reconocimiento de los beneficios ecológicos de los prados, por encima de su aspecto visual o de una actitud genérica favorable a la naturaleza.
- Information changes how people judge. Unterweger (2017), in Urban Science, asked 424 participants to rate photographs of meadows under different maintenance regimes, before and after receiving information about their environmental benefits. The information improved how naturalised management was rated. Southon et al. (2017) report a consistent result: tolerance of how meadows look outside the flowering season increased when people were told about their benefits and the savings from mowing less.
How we perceive a green space depends not only on what we see, but on what we know about its function. A meadow with tall vegetation stops being read as a lack of maintenance once people understand its role in conserving biodiversity.
Providing information does not resolve every conflict: perceptions also depend on personal experience, how people use a space, the nuisances they notice and their trust in the local council. But the evidence points clearly in one direction: perceptions are not set in stone, and knowledge helps to change them.
Public perception does not only shape how green spaces are valued; it can also determine whether new maintenance practices are adopted. A qualitative study by Hoyle et al. (2017), based on interviews with eight local authority managers in Luton and Bedford (United Kingdom), identified aesthetics and public reaction, the characteristics of each site and the availability of staff and funding as decisive factors in introducing perennial meadows. The findings suggest that the transition to more sustainable management is not purely a technical challenge: it also depends on organisational conditions and the social and political context.
This raises a risk that local councils cannot ignore: if renaturalisation measures are perceived as a lack of maintenance, they may create pressure to return to conventional practices and jeopardise the continuity of the changes. That is why communication cannot be an add-on or be limited to answering complaints: it must be part of the management strategy itself.
Communicating management: six lines of work
It is not about communicating more, but communicating better. This means building communication into the management strategy from the outset, as a tool that accompanies technical decisions, rather than as a one-off action once the conflict has already arisen. It also means knowing how people perceive urban green space, understanding what shapes that perception and crafting messages that connect environmental goals with everyday concerns.
1. Diagnose before explaining
Complaints, public enquiries and the experience of maintenance teams are a first-rate source of information. Which actions are most controversial? Which concerns keep coming up? Are there differences between neighbourhoods? Which criteria are hardest to understand? This analysis makes it possible to identify conflicts, understand their causes and decide which perceptions need work: responding to a concern about tree safety is not the same as justifying mowing a meadow less often.
2. Explain decisions, not just actions, and do it in advance
People need to understand what will be done, why, according to which criteria and with what expected results. If a park is going to include areas of naturalised meadow, it is important to explain beforehand how the space will change, why maintenance is being modified and which areas will keep their usual uses. When the changes become visible, people will have what they need to interpret them.
3. Translate technical criteria into tangible benefits
Concepts such as ecosystem services, ecological connectivity or differentiated management mean little outside technical circles. Explaining how a tree canopy lowers the temperature of a street, how a flowering meadow sustains pollinator populations or how permeable soil absorbs rainwater connects the decision with everyday life.
4. Make management visible
Management that intervenes less runs the risk of looking like no maintenance at all. Management calendars, explicit intervention criteria and what the literature calls cues to care (mown edges that frame the meadow, on-site signage) make it clear that behind every decision there is planning, technical knowledge and monitoring.
5. Ensure internal consistency
Technical departments, elected officials, maintenance contractors and public service channels must all know and share the management criteria. Contradictory messages erode trust more than any single action.
6. Listen and evaluate continuously
It is important to know whether perceptions are changing, not just to count signs, posts or activities. Trends in complaints, perception surveys and feedback from municipal teams are useful indicators. And the information gathered should be used to adjust both the communication and, where appropriate, the technical decisions, without giving up on environmental goals.
Management that is understood and shared
Communicating sustainable urban green space management is a way of bringing public knowledge, perceptions and expectations into municipal management, anticipating conflicts and building trust around decisions that transform the city.
Renaturalising requires technical judgement, planning and decisions that will not always be easy to understand. It also requires people to know what it is for, understand its benefits and be able to take part in shaping a public space that responds both to environmental challenges and to people’s needs.
Municipalities that take on the responsibility of renaturalising should be seen as places that are pioneering a new way of caring for their territory, not as places that have stopped caring for it. Achieving this is also part of managing urban green space.
Are you introducing differentiated management criteria in your municipality?