Access To Public Parks Research Articles

The Importance of Resilient, Health-Promoting, and Accessible Cultural Landscapes Using the Example of One Suburb of Gdańsk, Poland

The urban green public spaces “UGSs” provide a place for everyday contact with nature to humans. Green and blue infrastructure is important for urban heat mitigation. This study focuses on the relationship between satisfaction with the place of living and quality of life indexes, accessibility, and the quality of public green spaces in one of the suburbs of Gdańsk in Poland. Even though there are award-winning public parks and a large-scale Tri-city Landscape Park, the individual indexes measuring the satisfaction of local inhabitants with accessibility to public parks and their quality were well beyond the average in Gdańsk. The research question was to explain such low satisfaction with green public parks and spaces in Gdańsk-Osowa. The results of the evaluation of available “UGSs” against the universal standard for health-promoting urban places confirmed their recreational value but also demonstrated limited spatial and physical accessibility and possible overcrowding. Thus, the possibilities for everyday contact with nature for numerous inhabitants are limited and that condition may influence the life quality indexes. The results suggest that increasing urban density and the further development of residential neighborhoods requires careful planning of new public parks in consideration of proximity to public open green spaces. The accessibility of public parks within walking distance is crucial when planning new developments.

Spatial disparity patterns of green spaces and buildings in arid urban areas

Urban green spaces are a crucial component in regards to the quality of life, ecosystem balance and recreational services of populations, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. This study aimed to explore spatial patterns of accessibility to public parks on a neighbourhood scale in the Sohar Wilayat, Oman. Utilising GIS techniques and landscape metrics, we investigated the spatial variations of green patches relevant to other land use types predominantly residential buildings in each local area. The entropy index, the landscape shape index (LSI) and the area-weighted mean shape index (AWMSI) were calculated to analyse landscape spatial patterns of urban green spaces across the study area. The results of this study indicated that the large numbers of green space patches in the majority of neighbourhoods were associated with large population size. In measuring spatial accessibility to public parks, the central neighbourhoods were characterised by low scores and long distances from green spaces, while neighbourhoods in the south and north showed short distances and high scores for residents’ accessibility to the nearest park. High rates of fragmentation and irregular shapes, particularly within marginal and inner neighbourhoods, can be attributed to rapid urbanisation and sprawl, which has extensively transformed urban green spaces and vacant land into dwellings. Our findings suggest that a spatial quantification and identification of green space distribution patterns and the accessibility of public parks could provide decision-makers and municipality planners with invaluable guidelines for allocating green parks and recreational amenities equitably and efficiently to urban residents.

The Distribution and Accessibility of Urban Parks in Beijing, China: Implications of Social Equity.

As public service facilities, urban parks offer many benefits for daily life and social activities for residents. However, the accessibility of public parks to urban residents is often unevenly distributed in spaces that cannot be utilized fully. Here, we used the urban parks in Beijing, China as a case study and examined the relationship between urban park accessibility and population distribution at different administrative levels. Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve were used to evaluate the social equity of urban park accessibility, and the location quotient was used to identify the spatial difference between urban parks and resident population. The results of our study show that the urban park accessibility varies at district and subdistrict levels and that places with more urban parks usually have higher accessibility. Very importantly, the spatial equity is different from the social equity, a mismatch exists between the spatial distribution of urban parks and population, particularly for the elderly residents. These results generate valuable insights, as, in China and many developing countries, current urban public green space planning only uses the ratio of public green space to urban construction land and the per capita public green area.

Examination of spatial accessibility at micro- and macro-levels using the enhanced two-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method

ABSTRACTFloating catchment area (FCA) metrics are a family of measures used to quantify spatial accessibility. Spatial accessibility fuses the concepts of accessibility and availability to describe the relationship between the supply and demand of resources. FCA metrics have been applied to measure accessibility of numerous amenities including health services, public transportation, and recreation areas. Macro-level data such as census tracts and census blocks are often used to represent population locations in the calculation of FCA metrics. This approach is susceptible to masking geographic variability that may exist at less aggregated levels, such as at the individual level. This research explores how level of data aggregation can impact the measurement and interpretation of FCA based metrics. Our case study uses the E2SFCA method to measure and compare the spatial accessibility of public parks using micro- and macro-level population representations. Our analysis shows a general agreement in the FCA results among various levels of data aggregation. As expected, error in the FCA measurements generally increased as larger areal units were used; however, our results also show a somewhat nuanced picture, as particularities arising from the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem and the gravity-based calculation of the E2SFCA appear to affect the resulting differences among FCA values. Because obtaining and using individual based data can be challenging for researchers, macro-level data are often the only reliable alternative. Our findings provide insight into the limitations associated with using macro-level data to measure and interpret spatial accessibility.

Space for equity: socioeconomic variations in the provision of public parks in Hermosillo, Mexico

This article examines the intersection between globalisation and allocation of open public space by testing the spatial equity hypothesis in Hermosillo, Mexico, a regional city impacted directly by global processes. Availability and accessibility of public parks were examined using a geographic information system and neighbourhoods were stratified into quintiles based on socioeconomic status. Overall, the analysis shows that the amount of public park space in Hermosillo is substandard and its distribution reveals a pattern of spatial inequity affecting primarily residents of poor neighbourhoods. We argue that as the economy of the city grows increasingly integrated into global circuits, the global-to-local connection materialises in an unequal competition between globalised spaces and local public space. This, in turn, leads to further relegation of neighbourhoods that are already on the margins of urban equity regarding access to public parks. This study extends prior research conducted in developed countries to a city in a developing nation and fills a vacuum of information that potentially can contribute to a more equitable development in Hermosillo.