Being 23% comprised of green spaces, Brussels scoops 27th place amongst the rankings of the greenest cities, drawn up by the Dutch holiday booking site TravelBird. Antwerp comes in at 39th with 19.2% of the city covered by greenery.
TravelBird analysed 50 cities in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) taking a number of aspects: natural habitats, green spaces created by Man and farmland. In Brussels, 12.8% of green spaces are comprised of woods and 6% of parks.
At the top of the rankings is Prague, which overall is 56.7% made up of green space, followed by Madrid (45%), Vienna (42.7%), Edinburgh (41.8%) and Auckland (41.5%). Tokyo (6%), Santiago (6.6%) and Nicosia (7%) bring up the rear in the rankings.
TravelBird has also conducted studies upon the number of metres squared of vegetation per inhabitant, which produces a different set of rankings. In this case, Brussels is 39th with 19.61 m2 of green space per resident, with Antwerpen ahead of it (33rd with 36 m2/inhabitant). Reykjavik (410 m2), Auckland (357 m2), Bratislava (333 m2) and Sydney (236 m2) come out in the lead.
In contrast, Athens (having 6.45 m2), Istanbul (5 m2) and Tokyo (4 m2) close the rankings for this indicator.
The Brussels Times
