For other uses of the word Greenbelt, see Greenbelt (disambiguation).
A green belt or greenbelt is an area of largely undeveloped wild or agricultural land surrounding or neighbouring an urban area. A similar concept is the greenway which has a linear character and may run through the urban area instead of around it. The more general term in the U.S. is green space or greenspace, which may be a very small area such as a park.
In some countries, development in green belt areas is heavily restricted. Aims include:
protecting the natural environment;
improving air quality in urban areas;
ensuring that urban dwellers have easy access to the countryside, with consequent educational and recreational opportunities; and
protecting the unique character of rural communities which might otherwise be absorbed by expanding suburbs.
Sometimes, development jumps over the restricted greenbelt area, resulting in the creation of "satellite towns" which, although separated from the city by green space, function more like suburbs than independent communities.
The protection of green belts was pioneered in the United Kingdom, where there are fourteen green belt areas, covering 16,716 km², or 13% of England; for a detailed discussion of these, see Green Belt (UK). Another notable example is the Ottawa Greenbelt in Canada.
An act of the Swedish parliament from 1994 has declared a series of parks in Stockholm and the adjacent municipality of Solna to its north a "national urban park" (it stretches from the parks surrounding the royal palaces of Ulriksdal and Haga in Solna, through the Brunnsviken area, down to the former royal hunting grounds of North and South Djurgården).
In the urban core the provision of greenspace is usually already severely limited, partly through historical circumstances, and more recently very high land values; this makes the creation of new greenspace both important and difficult.
Areas of green roofs can also provide accessible space for people to enjoy, and some can be landscaped to extend existing greenspace, for example at Canary Wharf station on the Isle of Dogs, London.
The key issues that need to be considered in providing accessible open space are health and safety (the need for a external rail or fence), over-looking neighbouring properties (a material planning consideration), access to and from the roof-space, load-bearing (if the proposed numbers of people are to be more than a few), and management.
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