Judge a street by size and distance together, not by how green it looks. England's Accessible Greenspace Standard sets a doorstep criterion of at least 0.5 hectares of accessible greenspace within 200 metres of home and a local criterion of at least 2 hectares within 300 metres. The condition that changes the answer is the entrance: a space that meets both figures still fails the trip when the only gate you can use sits on the far side, or is shut at the hour you can get there.
Total greenery and usable space are two different measurements. In 2018, green infrastructure made up 42% of the area of cities across the 38 EEA member countries, while publicly available green space averaged only 3% of city area, according to the EEA briefing on access to nature in cities published on 1 February 2022. The same briefing puts the range for total green space between 6.8% of the city area in Trnava, Slovakia and 95.8% in Cáceres, Spain, so a European average settles nothing about one street.
Walk the route instead of drawing it
Give each person a job before you leave the door. One walks the route and times it; the other carries the map and writes down what the map promised, so the two records stay separate. Measure from the front door to the gate you can actually open, not to the middle of the green shape. Note the crossings, the surface, the gradient where you can see it, the benches and the posted opening hours, and write the date and time beside them, because a July evening and a January one give different answers on the same path. Where the walk itself is the obstacle, a record made from one fixed place is still a record, and noticing nature from one accessible spot sets out how to keep one. Mark every line taken from a published map as unverified until someone has stood there.
Which tier your street meets
The standard is written as six pairs of size and distance, and a street commonly meets one pair and misses the next.
Scroll sideways to see the full table →
| Tier | Accessible greenspace of at least | Within |
|---|---|---|
| Doorstep | 0.5 ha, playing fields included | 200 m |
| Local | 2 ha | 300 m |
| Neighbourhood | 10 ha | 1 km |
| Wider neighbourhood | 20 ha | 2 km |
| District | 100 ha | 5 km |
| Sub-regional | 500 ha | 10 km |
Alongside those pairs, Natural England sets a capacity criterion of at least 3 hectares of publicly accessible greenspace per 1,000 population, with no net loss at the area-wide scale. These are English criteria. Other countries publish their own: Berlin works to 500 metres to a green space of at least 0.5 hectares, plus at least 6 square metres of smaller and 7 square metres of larger green areas per person, and Italian planning rules require 9 square metres of parks and public areas per person, as the EEA briefing records.
Example: one street, two tiers
Example. One person walks and times the first route: 180 metres to a 0.6-hectare green with a step-free gate. The other checks the map's promise against the second: a 320-metre route to a 1.4-hectare park. The 0.6 hectares at 180 metres clears the doorstep criterion of 0.5 hectares within 200 metres. The park misses the local criterion twice over: 320 metres is beyond 300, and 1.4 hectares is below 2. The street therefore meets the doorstep tier and fails the local tier. That sentence is checkable by anyone with a map; "our street needs more green" is not. If the disagreement is about what the corner used to hold, the three columns in a two-generation walk keep the memory and today's measurement apart.
Turn the gap into one answerable question
Write the enquiry around the criterion you tested. "Which accessible greenspaces of at least 2 hectares does the authority record within 300 metres of this postcode, and where are their step-free entrances mapped?" names a measurement, a place and a date, which is what makes it answerable; the route from an observation to a question is set out in turning a neighbourhood observation into a council question. Send it with the walker's timing sheet and the map-reader's list of unverified claims attached as separate pages, so the reply can be matched to what each of you saw, and keep both for the next person who asks the same thing about the same street.
Sources
- Accessible Greenspace StandardAccessed September 17, 2026
- Who benefits from nature in cities?Accessed September 17, 2026