Sustainable development: Investigating the correlations between park equality and mortality by multilevel model in Shenzhen, China

Abstract

• Multilevel regression model was used to correlate the mortality and park equality. • Park accessibility has stronger correlation with mortality compared to green space. • The greater park accessibility is associated with a lower mortality. • This negative correlation disappears when accessibility exceeds 47.72 m 2 /person. • Moderate park constructions are suggested for balancing public health and land use. Numerous studies have revealed that accessible parks are associated with better health outcomes. This interdisciplinary study focuses the spatial equality of local parks in Shenzhen, China, and aims to investigate its correlation with the summation of mortalities for the top four causes of non-accidental death. The paper consists of two parts: firstly, the spatial equality of parks was assessed by several criteria including the Gini index and accessibility calculated by the Gaussian-based two-step-floating catchment area (G2SFCA) method, and then multilevel regression analysis was novelly used to explore the correlation between the equality of park and mortality integrated with geodemographic and economic factors. The results show that the residents living in city centre experience higher accessibility and more equality of parks. There is greater equality regarding neighbourhood parks provision than urban parks provision. Parks that are walking accessible have stronger correlations with mortality compared to all types of green spaces. Most importantly, the greater park accessibility is associated with a lower mortality whereas this relation no longer exists when the accessibility exceeds 47.72m 2 /person, which is concluded that building parks moderately is suggested to balance the health benefits and land scarcity for the sustainable development of cities.