This photo shows the Han River park in Yeouido, Seoul, on Sept. 13, 2020. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 9 (Korea Bizwire) — The more a country is economically developed, the more the happiness of citizens is dependent on urban green spaces rather than economic growth, research showed Tuesday.
A joint research team from the Institute for Basic Science and the Pohang University of Science and Technology analyzed satellite data on urban green spaces in 60 countries.
The research team concluded that there is a substantial correlation between urban green spaces and the happiness of citizens.
The research team investigated the urban green spaces of 90 cities in 60 countries using high resolution data from the Sentinel-2 satellite.
After analyzing the correlation between green spaces, economy and citizen happiness on the basis of gross domestic product (GDP) data by country, the research team found that in all cities, more green space resulted in higher citizen happiness.
However, when it came to the 30 countries at the bottom of the GDP rankings, economic growth had a closer relationship to happiness.
In these countries, the level of citizen happiness remained unchanged before and after the removal of the ‘urban green space’ factor.
In contrast, when it came to cities with a per-capital gross national income (GNI) of more than US$38,000, the level of citizen happiness declined sharply when the ‘urban green space’ factor was removed, indicating that the acquisition of green spaces has a more critical influence on the level of citizen happiness than economic growth.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
