Avaliação dos serviços ecossistêmicos culturais em áreas verdes urbanas: sistematização de dimensões, critérios e indicadores

Abstract

The growing recognition of ecosystem services in urban contexts has highlighted the role of green spaces in promoting well-being, quality of life, and urban sustainability. Among these services, Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) stand out, as they are associated with non-material benefits such as leisure, recreation, aesthetic appreciation, environmental education, sense of belonging, territorial identity, spirituality, and psychological well-being. Despite their relevance, CES remain insufficiently incorporated into urban planning and management instruments due to their subjective, relational, and difficult-to-measure nature. In this context, this master’s dissertation aims to systematize, based on Systematic Literature Reviews, the types of CES associated with urban green spaces, as well as the methods, criteria, and indicators used for their assessment, with the purpose of supporting future evaluations of these services in urban planning. The research adopts an exploratory, descriptive, mixed-methods, and documentary approach, structured around two Systematic Literature Reviews conducted according to the PSALSAR protocol and PRISMA guidelines, with searches carried out in the Web of Science database. The first systematic review identified the main types of urban green spaces and the CES associated with them; the second analyzed methods, criteria, indicators, and measurement strategies used to assess these services. The results indicate a predominance of studies focused on urban parks, urban forests, and riparian areas, as well as a higher recurrence of CES related to recreation, aesthetics, well-being, social interaction, and education. The findings also show that CES assessment remains concentrated on dimensions that are more easily measurable, whereas aspects such as identity, belonging, memory, spirituality, and symbolic values are less frequently operationalized. As its main contribution, the dissertation presents a preliminary matrix of dimensions, criteria, and indicators, derived from the integrative synthesis of the two reviews and conceived as a theoretical-methodological basis for future assessments of CES quality in urban green spaces. It concludes that incorporating CES into urban planning requires multidimensional approaches that are sensitive to socio-territorial contexts and capable of articulating perceptual, spatial, behavioral, observational, and qualitative indicators.