Abstract

Globally, cities face daunting challenges such as climate change, water insecurity, air pollution, and ecosystem depletion which are worsening public health and well-being. Currently, cities are looking for new strategies to deal with climate-related impacts and other environmental issues by protecting urban blue and green spaces. The paper’s main objective is to explore and establish the socio-economic, and environmental benefits of Green and Blue Spaces (GBS) through a systematic review of the literature. This can help for the re-establishment of GBS activity. Findings suggest that increased urbanization and development have placed the urban green spaces under extreme pressure, while unplanned urban growth resulted in the loss of urban ecosystems. This paper underlines the significant contributions of Urban GBSs to improve the Urban Ecosystem to ensure social and economic and environmental sustainability. The GBI has multiple social, economic, cultural, and environmental benefits for the urban and pre-urban inhabitants. These include; social benefit (health and wellbeing, recreational and educational value); economic benefits (economic value, energy-saving, and green job opportunities), and the environmental benefit of GBI (includes an ecological response, carbon reduction, and sequestration, improving urban air quality and climate change and adaptation response).