The role of urban greening in limiting land take in case of population growth: Evidence for Europe 2005–2018

Built-up land is supposed to serve the population. The question is how changes in population affect changes in land use. In the case of population growth, one can expect a densification of settlements that does not involve land take or spatial spillovers that convert land into built-up areas (urbanisation). In the case of population decline, land may remain as built-up land or be returned to other uses (greening). This paper examines these patterns for Europe for the years 2005–2018, based on LUCAS data for land use and census data for population. It is a low granularity analysis on a 2 km x 2 km grid with more than 1 million grid cells. It uses unsupervised learning methods - market basket analysis to detect major trends, and econometric probit models to find factors that determine the probability of land use transitions. We find that there is no strong population pressure. Even if the European territory undergoes all possible patterns of change, in general the built-up area remains as it was or disappears even under population growth. The explanation for this phenomenon lies in urban greening and sustainable development policies.