INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Volume 3, No 5, 2013 © Copyright by the authors - Licensee IPA- Under Creative Commons license 3.0 Research article ISSN 0976 – 4402 Received on January 2013 Published on April 2013 1785 Valuing recreational benefits of urban forestry-A case study of Chandigarh city of India Pradeep Chaudhry Alternate Hydro Energy Centre, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, India pradeepifs@yahoo.com doi: 10.6088/ijes.2013030500045 ABSTRACT Urban green spaces carry a number of non market or intangible benefits, which make a city healthy and perfect place to live in. Recreation and aesthetic benefits are among such ecosystem services being generated by these resources. Unfortunately studies involving quantification and valuing these benefits are lacking in most of the developing countries including India. With the result, these assets are not given as much importance as they deserve in a city development plan. The article presents a brief summary of the research study carried out in Chandigarh city during 2002-04 for estimating recreational use value of city‟s urban green spaces. The results can prove useful for urban policy makers, planners and academics including landscaping architects, foresters, ecologists and environmental economists. Keywords: Non market benefits, recreational and amenity value, contingent valuation method, travel cost method, consumer surplus, willingness to pay, residents, tourists. 1. Introduction Urban forests consisting of public parks, gardens, boulevards have significant amenity values with provision of leisure and recreational opportunities. These values, generally, fall outside market transactions and lack a market price. Therefore such non market benefits are often ignored or grossly underestimated by policy makers while framing development options for the cities. On the other hand, various development options to the area may be attractive to the politicians and bureaucrats due to immediate returns from development projects. In developing countries especially, space left for developing urban parks and gardens in future are subject to extreme pressure for constructing shopping complexes, housing flats, community centers etc because their real worth in terms of various intangible benefits is not assessed. Once the monetary valuation of recreational, aesthetic and other non-market benefits is done, it can be introduced into public decision-making and cost-benefit analysis of the projects. Therefore, quantitative information and assessment regarding residents‟ and tourists‟ opinions attached to urban green spaces is needed for assessing urban land use and planning. Chandigarh is one of the planned cities of India, known world over for its art, architectural beauty, gardens and greens; was selected for quantification of recreational use value of urban forestry. Being one of the greenest cities of Asia, it is attracting tourists from all parts of the globe. The non-market value of recreational and aesthetic benefits provided by the urban forestry of the city, from the point of view of residents and tourists was estimated. The focus of this study, in the form of Ph.D thesis awarded by FRI University, Dehradun, India in 2006, was on city‟s parks, gardens, tree-avenues, reserved forests and the Sukhna wild life