GREENTRAVEL

From street trees and vertical gardens, to urban meadows and forests, greenery plays an important role in sustaining healthy and liveable cities. However, the availability of greenery in our cities is also a matter of justice and equality: we don’t all access and experience greenery – and enjoy the benefits it imparts – equally. This is already well understood in residential neighbourhoods. Yet, the effects and benefits of exposure to greenery during people’s everyday active travel as they move around the city, and how equitably these are distributed, are less well known.

The GREENTRAVEL Project aims to leverage advanced urban informatics methods to examine how urban greenery in everyday travel environments impacts the health and wellbeing of urban residents in European cities, and identify solutions to promote fairness and equality. We want to understand why travel environment greenery matters, where and when it is available, and importantly, for whom.

GREENTRAVEL is funded by the European Research Council and lasts for five years (2023 to 2027). 

Read our recent news and watch our short presentation to learn more! The publications list documents our scientific advancements to date. 

News
Project in a nutshell

Objectives of the GREENTRAVEL Project

Publications
  • Poom, A., Willberg, E., & Toivonen, T. (2021). Environmental exposure during travel: A research review and suggestions forward. Health & Place, 70, 102584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2021.102584
  • Helle, J., Poom, A., Willberg, E., & Toivonen, T. (2023). The Green Paths Route Planning Software for Exposure-Optimised Active Travel. Journal of Open Research Software, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jors.400
  • Willberg, E., Poom, A., Helle, J., Toivonen, T., (2023). Cyclists’ exposure to air pollution, noise, and greenery: a population-level spatial analysis approach. International Journal of Health Geographics, 22(5). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-023-00326-7
  • Torkko, J., Poom, A., Willberg, E., & Toivonen, T. (2023). How to best map greenery from a human perspective? Comparing computational measurements with human perception. Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 5, 1160995. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsc.2023.1160995
  • Willberg, E., Fink, C., Klein, R., Heinonen, R., & Toivonen, T. (2024). ‘Green or short: Choose one’ – A comparison of walking accessibility and greenery in 43 European cities. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 113, 102168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2024.102168
Previous projects

GREENTRAVEL project builds on our previous and other projects on urban exposures:

Funding