Historical Park Restoration: Enhancing Ecosystem Services Through Sustainable Design

Ecosystem services (ESs) support human well-being, but their integrated assessment in urban green spaces remains challenging, particularly at the project scale, where finer spa-tial resolution (tens of meters) is required. Historical parks are complex socio-ecological systems with non-linear ES interactions. This study develops a design-oriented frame-work to assess how restoration interventions influence regulation, maintenance, and cul-tural ES potential provision. Indicators derived from field surveys and established models were selected according to CICES V5.2 and adapted to ecological and cultural features of historical parks. Survey units were defined for each ES section to enable a spatially explicit comparison between current and design scenarios. A normalized scoring system was ap-plied to evaluate category-level changes and overall interaction patterns. The framework was tested on the restoration project of Monza Park (northern Italy). Results show a marked increase in cultural and regulation services (+28% and +17%, respectively), while maintenance services exhibited a slight decrease (−3%). These trends are reflected in the Cumulative Indicator Score (CIS), indicating an overall positive balance of ES provision in the design scenario. The Design Effectiveness Score (DES) showed consistently non-negative values (DES ≥ 0), reaching maximum effectiveness in transitions to woody vege-tation (DES ≈ 1). The Synergy–Trade-off Score (STS) confirmed a general increase in ES supply across all categories, with a clear prevalence of synergies over trade-offs. The pro-posed framework supports the data-driven, spatially explicit evaluation of design alter-natives and can guide decision-making in historical park restoration