Heat adaptation through urban greening: Geospatial evidence on socioeconomic needs, political goals, and financial constraints

This paper investigates whether land use changes of greening are linked to socioeconomic needs, political goals, and financial constraints. It uses data for 153 German cities at the 1km grid level and at the city level from the CORINE Land Cover Plus Backbone dataset, and combines them with spatial indicators of heat exposure, socioeconomic disadvantage, demographic structure, population size, local political characteristics, and fiscal capacity. We find that German cities experienced more sealing than greening between 2018 and 2023, with only seven cities showing a net increase in green space. There is no discernible link between greening and needs as measured by higher heat exposure, greater socioeconomic disadvantage, or population growth at the spatial grid level. We also do not find evidence that a city adopting a heat plan or the political orientation of municipal governments are linked to increased greening. However, our data show that fiscal capacities matter, as fiscally constrained municipalities undertake lower greening.