Towards Smarter Urban Green Space Allocation: Investigating Scale-Dependent Impacts on Multiple Ecosystem Services

Urban green space (UGS) is crucial for enhancing ecosystem services (ESs), offering both ecological and social benefits. The multifunctional and synergistic development of UGS is essential for addressing ecological security challenges and meeting the demand for high-quality urban living. In densely urbanized areas, optimizing green space scale is essential for maximizing its multifunctionality. This study focuses on the Taihu Lake region in China, assessing six ESs. A self-organizing map (SOM) was employed to identify five distinct ecosystem service bundles (ESBs), while redundancy analysis (RDA) explored how green space scale characteristics influence ESs within each bundle. The results indicate that ESs exhibit significant spatial heterogeneity, with the ESBs showing two typical patterns in terms of synergistic-tradeoff relationships. The green ratio (GR) is the primary driver, with largest patch index (LPI) acting as the secondary factor, while other indicators’ effects vary across ESBs. This study systematically examines the pathways through which UGS scale characteristics influence ESs under multiple scenarios, adopting the ESB perspective. It proposes a tiered UGS scale regulation framework aimed at achieving synergistic, multi-value outcomes. Such a framework has strong potential to enhance both the ecological performance and spatial efficiency of UGS allocation. The findings contribute a novel approach to resolving multifunctional integration challenges in high-density urban settings and providing valuable insights for landscape planning and management.