The purpose of the thesis was to investigate whether the recommendation from the Ministry of The Environment on the maximum distance of 300 meters to the green area from the day care center is fulfilled in the day care centers located in Tampere. The study was commissioned by the City of Tampere. In general, urban green areas affect the economic, ecologic and social sustainability. They also produce positive health effects which can be divided into three categories, i.e. physical, psychological and social ones. Along the urbanization, the access to the green areas may decrease. There is no actual statutory order of green spaces, only recommendations. In this thesis, different recommendations and indicators were presented to help choose valid green areas to be investigated.

The aim of the study was to analyze distance within four different green space categories with geographic information system (GIS). The green space categories were: 0.25 hectares` green space, 1.5 ha forests, 10 ha forests and nature conservation areas. In the research, all possible open access spatial data was utilized as material. The routes between day care centers and green areas were drawn with GIS software QGIS. Thereafter, the data was analyzed and visualized with maps.

The results showed that 97 % of the day care centers were located under 300 m distance from 0.25 ha green spaces, 66 % under 300 m distance from 1.5 ha forests, 22 % under 300 m distance from 10 ha forests and 8 % 300 m distance from a nature conservation area. In the future, it is recommended to investigate what kind of green areas day care centers really use and how far they locate.