Monitoring urban green spaces A mixed-methods framework for policy-informed spatial analysis

Urban green spaces (UGS) play a critical role in addressing health, recreation, climate adaptation, and heat stress challenges in cities. However, municipalities often struggle with evaluating the effectiveness of their greening policies due to unclear definitions, limited data, and methodological gaps. This study proposes and demonstrates a three-step mixed-methods framework for monitoring urban green spaces that combines remote sensing, policy analysis, and expert evaluation. Amsterdam's greening policy serves as the empirical case through which the framework is developed and validated. The findings highlight the need for clear definitions of UGS functions, integrated data sources, and quality-focused evaluations to support evidence-based policymaking.