Abstract
Public urban parks are accessible to everyone in a city. The time people need to reach a public park influences the accessibility of the park. Parks far away from home are less accessible because of time to spend to reach them than those in the neighborhood. Good green urban infrastructure aims to provide different types of parks (by size and structure) to all urban dwellers. The network of parks should allow all inhabitants to have access to parks within close proximity to their residences. This paper aims to investigate the accessibility of parks as related to the social status of the inhabitants. This was investigated using the example of a clearly socially stratified city (Tabriz, Iran), in which a part of the urban society (by total number and social status) has better or worse access to urban parks. The example of urban parks shows which services are supplied on site and who the potential users are within an accessible distance. The services are qualified by structural park indicators and quantified by the quantity of these indicators. The distances are calculated on the basis of the size of the parks. Different distance circles around the parks indicate from where most of the users are coming, depending on park category. A quantification of population as related to potential users by social status in different distances to the parks shows the accessibility of parks for different quantities of inhabitants and different social strata. The classification of social status (high, middle, and low) was carried out by General Census of statistical center in 2005, informal settlement project data, statistical blocks data, land price in Tabriz municipality, and master and detailed plan reports. Many households do not enjoy government recommended levels of access to public green spaces in Tabriz, and the results highlight the social segregation in park distribution and their accessibility. The best parks are located in the high social status areas, and the accessibility is the best among all societal levels.
Highlights
Public urban parks are accessible to everyone in a city
The best parks are located in the high social status areas, and the accessibility is the best among all societal levels
Green spaces play an important role in supporting urban communities both ecologically and socially
Summary
Public urban parks are accessible to everyone in a city. The time people need to reach a public park influences the accessibility of the park. Urban ecosystems cover a large proportion of the land surface, or those in which people live at high densities (Pickett et al 2001) This include ‘green and blue spaces’ in urban areas, including parks, cemeteries, yards and gardens, urban allotments, urban forests, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and Breuste and Rahimi Ecological Processes (2015) 4:6 urban parks are often the only alternative green spaces, especially to those covered by trees, that were lost as a consequence of urbanization (Pauleit et al 2005), and they play important roles in providing regulation, provisioning and cultural ecosystem services, such as air and water purification, wind and noise filtering (Chiesura 2004), preventing soil erosion (Binford and Buchenau 1993), accommodation of social interactions (Peters et al 2010; Iamtrakul et al 2005; Cranz 1983), providing hygiene and aesthetics (Ignatieva et al 2011), reducing work-related stress (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Gobster and Westphal 2004), leisure, sport and recreational activities (Salazar and Menéndez 2007), biodiversity, urban cooling (Cao et al 2010; Imai and Nakashizuka 2010; Kordowski and Kuttler 2010), selling price of nearby houses (Benson et al 1998; Tyrväinen 1997), and increasing property values (Geoghegan et al 1997; Tyrväinen 1997; Morancho 2003). Other environmental factors such as the size of the green space, presence of facilities, and availability for activities are thought to have an influence on the use of an urban green space (Van Herzele and Wiedemann 2003; Bedimo-Rung et al 2005; Giles-Corti et al 2005)
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