As cities grow denser, reconciling urban intensity with ecological and social quality becomes increasingly urgent. The question of whether a city can be both dense and green is often framed as a technical challenge. In reality, it is a conceptual one. Cities already know how to build densely and how to introduce greenery. What remains unresolved is how to meaningfully integrate the two without reducing one to a justification for the other.In recent years, vegetation-covered buildings, green façades, planted balconies, and vertical forests have become powerful symbols of a sustainable urban future. They suggest that density and ecology are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing. Yet this image risks oversimplifying a far more complex relationship. If cities are to be both dense and green, urban greening must operate across multiple scales and be evaluated not only by how it looks, but by how it performs.High-density development is often justified on environmental grounds: it reduces land consumption, limits urban sprawl, and supports public transport systems (e.g. Jenks et al., 1996;UN-Habitat, 2020). But at the scale of everyday life, density can come at a cost. Smaller apartments with limited private outdoor space and increased pressure on shared infrastructure can diminish the quality of living space per resident. This is where greenery becomes essential, not as an aesthetic supplement, but as a structural component of livability. Urban vegetation improves air quality (Diener Elmqvist et al., 2015). In dense environments, these are not luxuries; they are compensatory mechanisms. However, a key tension emerges: as density increases, the availability of ground-level green space often decreases. This raises a critical question: can vertical greenery compensate for this loss? This paper explores whether a city can be both dense and green, arguing that success depends on a multi-scalar, evidence-based approach to urban greening. urban forest. In our opinion, the biggest shortcoming of vertical green elements is that they do not contribute enough to the quality of living space per resident.Moreover, the implementation of vertical greenery is far from neutral. It introduces significant economic and technical demands: structural reinforcement to support additional loads, irrigation systems, specialized planting techniques, and long-term maintenance regimes. These systems must comply with fire safety regulations and often require centralized management (Al-Kodmany, 2023;Perini as well as a temporal component reflecting growing characteristics of greenery and potential of the concept of managed vegetation succession, in which long-term stability, continuous canopy cover, and the functionality of green spaces are ensured through sequential planting, thinning, and replanting succession models.In practice, dynamic proportionality can be observed in projects showing a wide range of established solutions for simultaneously increasing urban density and enhancing urban greening, which can be divided into "land sparing" and "land sharing" approaches (McDonald et al., 2023). The former focuses on preserving and protecting natural habitats (e.g., remnant ecosystems, riparian corridors, and designated conservation areas), planning parks, and developing green and blue-green infrastructure systems that support biodiversity while improving quality of life in dense urban settings. The latter approach involves sharing space between the built environment and nature, for example, through green roofs and facades, vegetation around buildings and streets, private gardens, and the reuse of degraded land for new green spaces. Together, these approaches demonstrate that density and green infrastructure are not necessarily in conflict -with appropriate urban planning and regulation, they can be effectively combined to create compact yet nature-rich urban environments (Samuelsson et al., 2021). Therefore, early integration of green infrastructure in planning is essential to achieve dynamic proportionality between densification and available green areas (Goličnik Marušić et al., 2023), a key measure of urban resilience and equitable quality of life.Beyond the mentioned surface metrics, it advocates for qualitative indicators to assess socioeconomic-ecological benefits, including increased shading, water retention, and biodiversity enhancement, providing a more holistic framework for evaluating urban greening strategies (Elmqvist et al., 2015;Haase et al., 2014). This requires moving beyond surface measurements toward more complex qualitative indicators, such as:• shading capacity and reduction of heat stress,• water retention and stormwater management,• support for biodiversity,• accessibility and usability for residents• noise reduction and air quality improvement.At the same time, strategies such as vertical greening, often promoted as a key solution in dense environments, should be approached critically. While they offer important benefits, including space efficiency and microclimatic regulation, they also present limitations related to maintenance requirements, cost, and uneven accessibility. In many cases, vertically integrated greenery may complement rather than substitute ground-level public green space, particularly in terms of social use and inclusivity. A balanced approach is therefore necessary, combining vertical, horizontal, and hybrid green systems.Without such a proportional and multidimensional approach, densification risks producing spatial and social imbalances. Overburdened green spaces, reduced access to nature, and declining environmental quality can disproportionately affect urban populations, particularly in already dense areas (UN-Habitat, 2020; WHO, 2016). This is not only an environmental issue but a social one. Access to greenery is closely linked to health, well-being, and social cohesion (WHO, 2016). If green infrastructure does not keep pace with density, cities risk becoming more unequal as they become more compact (Table 1). Yes, but not by default, and not by design shortcuts. A dense and green city is not achieved by adding plants to buildings after the fact. It requires:• early integration of green infrastructure in planning,• coordination across scales, from façades to regional systems,• realistic acknowledgment of economic and technical constraints (Chau et al., 2025),• and a shift from symbolic to performance-based evaluation (Goličnik Marušić et al., 2023).It is important to consider economic and technical factors in the planning and maintenance of green areas, particularly vertical greenery. Vertical greenery has a role to play, but it is not a substitute for ground-level green space. It is one element within a broader system that must be carefully balanced and continuously maintained (Al-Kodmany, 2023). Densification without proportional expansion or enhancement of green spaces risks spatial and social imbalance. Ultimately, the question is not whether density and greenery can coexist, but whether cities are willing to treat greenery as infrastructure rather than ornament. Only then can the dense city also become genuinely green.Key words: urban greening; multiple scales; metrics of greening; native habitat types; vertical green elements.
Marušić et al. (Fri,) studied this question.