Currently, the attention to a green agenda is becoming more and more visible in the search for sustainability in cities. The use of benchmarks, when based on mere arithmetic operations, which distribute an area per inhabitant, masks the real situation of urban green areas and allows methodological differences from one place to another, thus preventing a comparative analysis. The use of conventional standards would allow cities to share goals and compare results related to the quality and distribution of green areas, providing institutions with a methodology that would aid in the diagnosis phase of urban planning. The proposed methodology is a quali-quantitative index that evaluates the Quality of Urban Green Areas (IQAVU, Brazilian acronym for Índice de Qualidade das Áreas Verdes Urbanas), utilizing measures for indicators (sub-indexes) representative of Social, Environmental and Aesthetic functions, all of equal importance. The index is intended to be applicable to any urban area, regardless of demographic, geographic or political reality. In each indicator, fundamental parameters for the characterization of an urban green area will be considered. Therefore, an urban green area deficient in at least one of these indicators cannot be considered functional. An application of a case study is presented in the city of Ponta Grossa, Southern Brazil.