Abstract
Cross-city convergence in green space coverage could contribute to our understanding of the law of motion of distribution dynamics of environmental sustainability across cities and provide crucial information for designing policies regarding complex processes relating to human–environment interactions in an urban system. The relationship between socioeconomic factors and green space coverage has been widely discussed, but research on the distribution dynamics of green space coverage across cities is limited. This paper explored the pattern of convergence in green space coverage of a group of 285 Chinese cities over the period of 2002–2012 by using hybrid approaches, including the nonparametric estimation technique, unconditional β-convergence model, and conditional β-convergence model. The results indicated that the green space coverage level in most cities has been substantially improved; the spatial disparity across Chinese cities has shrunk, and the level of green space coverage has converged to 104% of the average level. The β-convergence estimation results demonstrate the existence of unconditional and conditional convergence in green space coverage among Chinese cities, which indicates that cities with a low initial level of green space coverage grow faster than those with an initial high level. Faster sprawling, more compact and wealthier cities are likely to converge to a higher level of green space coverage. Expansion of the population and spatial scale of cities contributes to increasing green space coverage, sprawling of built-up area leads to a decrease of the green space coverage, and economic growth has little impact on green space coverage.
Highlights
More than 50% of the global population lives in cities, and by 2050 this number will increase to 80% [1]
The economic growth has little impact on green space coverage, which suggests that economic development does not always lead to improvement in green space coverage, and China requires the design and implementation of specific policies, which have been reported to contribute to the increase in the urban green space area [67,68] and to guarantee green space demand
The distribution dynamics of green space coverage across 285 cities were investigated, and we explored the impacts of socioeconomic driving factors on the changes in green space coverage
Summary
More than 50% of the global population lives in cities, and by 2050 this number will increase to 80% [1]. With sustained population concentration in cities, many cities tend towards sprawling, especially in built-up areas. The remaining nature within cities becomes extremely important to the ecological health and habitability of cities. As the main part of the nature system in cities, green spaces, which can be defined as urban spaces primarily covered by vegetation which are available for urban residents [2], have been called the “lungs of the city” [3]. Green space coverage can be considered a measurement of environmental sustainability and ecological health for cities [13]
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