Dear Green Place comes bottom for ...greenery

IT is known by the nickname ‘Dear Green Place’. But Glasgow has come bottom in a table of city centres, for having the fewest parks in Britain.

Scientists from the University of Sheffield analysed the green attributes of city centres across England, Scotland and Wales and ranked them on greenness.

Glasgow had the least green city centre, with Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield and Middlesbrough also making up the bottom five. Exeter was found to have the greenest city centre while in second place was London’s Islington, then Bristol, Bournemouth and Cambridge.

The researchers said their findings, published in the scientific journal Plos One, ‘reveal a clear divide between the urban city centres’, with the greenest ones in the South of England and the lowest-scoring ones in former industrial cities further north.

The University of Sheffield’s Paul Brindley said the study ‘clearly highlights the need to urgently improve the greenness of city centres at the bottom of the list’.