ENHANCING CARBON SEQUESTRATION POTENTIAL OF URBAN GREEN SPACES THROUGH TRANSFER OF DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS STRATEGY

Non-urbanized areas (NUAs) play an important role in reducing the effects of climate change by providing both carbon storage and sequestration. Despite their importance, they are endangered by ur-banization pressures and often neglected by local spatial planning practices. On the contrary, NUAs should be protected and designed as new public urban green spaces to enhance the amount of vegeta-tion of different land cover types and therefore their potential capacity of carbon sequestration. This study proposes a three steps-method for enhancing carbon sequestration of NUAs through the imple-mentation of new public green spaces while ensuring the related economic feasibility of urban devel-opment based on a Transfer of development rights program.