Looking beyond boundaries: Revisiting the rural-urban interface of Green Space Accessibility in Europe

Abstract

Improving Green Space Accessibility (GSA) in public spaces in cities and communities reduces disparities among people and fosters sustainable development. However, traditional mapping approaches in cities neglects green spaces in the hinterland and treats the geographical distance as a fixed quantity. This limits conclusions about spatial inequalities in Green Space Accessibility and influences the evaluation of current policies which seek to ensure a high local recreation quality for all residents irrespective of any administrative boundaries. This paper aims to detect spatial inequalities in Green Space Accessibility for urban green (UG) and non-urban green (NUG) across Europe, and reveals the role of the rural-urban interface (RUI). The approach taken here calculates Green Space Accessibility across administrative boundaries, which enables distance to be treated as a flexible variable. The results highlight major inequalities between and within regions and countries. However, unequal Green Space Accessibility for urban green is compensated in most countries by more equal one for non-urban green, which is of particular relevance in the rural-urban interface. The combined perspective on both relative and absolute Green Space Accessibility suggests a new perspective on the rural-urban interface that is critical for equitable green infrastructure planning. This paper concludes that, in order to bridge the urban-rural-divide, monitoring and planning tools that examine the arbitrary use of thresholds and existing administrative boundaries are needed.