Urban Equity Research Articles

Community Engagement in the Management of Urban Green Spaces: Prospects from a Case Study in an Emerging Economy

Urban green spaces (UGSs) play a vital role in enhancing the quality of life in cities, particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions such as the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (MRSP). However, significant challenges related to equitable management and access persist, often exacerbated by socio-environmental inequalities. While much of the existing literature on UGS management focuses on developed economies, there is a gap in our understanding of how community engagement influences UGS outcomes in emerging economies, which face unique socio-economic and infrastructural constraints. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of community engagement on UGS management in the MRSP, specifically examining how increased participation correlates with improved UGS access and reduced socio-environmental inequality. Utilizing survey data from 33 municipal environmental departments across the MRSP, this research applied correlation tests, generalized linear models, and a non-parametric analysis of variance to evaluate the relationships between community engagement, UGS coverage, and inequality. The findings reveal a moderate positive correlation between community engagement and UGS coverage, alongside a negative correlation with socio-environmental inequality. Increased levels of community participation were associated with greater access to UGSs and a reduction in disparities across socio-economic groups. These results underscore the potential of fostering community involvement in UGS management to promote urban equity and environmental sustainability in emerging economies, particularly through institutional support and transparent information sharing. Future research should focus on longitudinal studies to better understand the long-term effects of sustained community engagement and incorporate qualitative data from community members to provide a more comprehensive analysis of participatory processes. Additionally, expanding the scope of analysis to include informal and private green spaces will offer a more holistic understanding of urban greening dynamics.

Deciphering house prices by integrating street perceptions with a machine-learning algorithm: A case study of Xi'an, China

A comprehensive understanding of house prices and their factors provide insights into the demand for housing while helping policymakers implement measures to manage the housing market. Traditional studies either focus more on linear relationships and ignore complex, non-linear influences or consider neighborhood amenities but lose sight of the streetscape. This study aims to enrich the literature by integrating street-perception characteristics with an interpretable machine-learning technique for modeling house prices. Specifically, street-view images were semantically segmented to quantify street-perception characteristics from five perspectives: greenness, openness, enclosure, walkability, and imageability. By combining the determinants of community attributes and living convenience, 17 explanatory variables were fed into a gradient-boosting decision tree (GBDT) model to estimate housing prices. The results reveal that the model significantly outperforms the linear model (R2 increased by 47.87 %). Additionally, an improvement of 26.15 % (R2) was observed when street-perception characteristics were incorporated. Moreover, complicated non-linear relationships and interaction effects are discussed by visualizing partial dependence plots (PDPs). These findings offer nuanced guidance for improving the neighborhood environment to promote urban equity and develop a sustainable housing market.

Reshaping port-city relationships through underground logistics system: A mixed qualitative approach

Against the backdrop of explosive growth in freight demand, the negative impacts of the traditional road-system-based port-city logistics mode on urban transportation, environment and safety have become prominent livelihood issues, as well as significant economic and social problems. Port-city underground logistics system (PC-ULS) has been widely recognized as an innovative way to ensure the sustainable development of port cities. However, the influence mechanism of PC-ULS on the port-city relationships is still unclear. Thus, this paper attempts to explore the PC-ULS-based port-city relationships formation process and the main influencing factors using a mixed qualitative approach. The social, economic and environmental impacts of PC-ULS on the development of port cities were systematically analyzed using the Shanghe Port ULS and Shanghai Port ULS as the case studies. The results show that the impacts generated by PC-ULS are positive and widely distributed across the economic sphere, port-city traffic, logistics governance, urban equity, stakeholders, ports, and urban spaces, as well as ecological sustainability. Furthermore, the urban planning, technology compatibility and engineering risk related factors have a strong impact on the PC-ULS implementation. A set of incentive policies has been designed to promote the effectiveness of PC-ULS. The findings provide a unique perspective on underground space development and utilization to address port-city conflicts, as well as a reasonable implementation pathway for PC-ULS application.

Sidewalks as places for socialization: urban equity for people with reduced mobility

Resumo Diante da redução da equidade de usos e da garantia de acessibilidade em cidades, o objetivo geral desta pesquisa é avaliar as condições de calçadas para grupos de mobilidade reduzida, adotando trechos viários do bairro Centro de Curitiba, Paraná, como objetos de estudo. Com estrutura multimétodos, qualiquantitativa e exploratória, ela foi desenvolvida em quatro fases: caracterização local, leitura técnica, análise perceptual e avaliação integrada. Como respostas à pergunta investigativa sobre aproximações e distanciamentos entre prática e percepção desses espaços, os resultados evidenciam a impossibilidade de confirmação da hipótese orientativa de que o atendimento a princípios especializados permite melhores qualificações perceptivas, potencializadoras de identificação, pertencimento e apropriação de calçadas como lugares de socialização, não diagnosticadas neste caso.

Navigating Post-COVID-19 Social–Spatial Inequity: Unravelling the Nexus between Community Conditions, Social Perception, and Spatial Differentiation

The 2023 SDGs report underscores the prolonged disruption of COVID-19 on community living spaces, infrastructure, education, and income equality, exacerbating social and spatial inequality. Against the backdrop of the dual impact of significant events and the emergence of digital technologies, a coherent research trajectory is essential for characterizing social–spatial equity and understanding its influential factors within the urban planning discipline. While prior research emphasized spatial dimensions and mitigated spatial differentiation to ensure urban equity, the complexity of these interconnections necessitates a more comprehensive approach. This study adopts a holistic perspective, focusing on the “social–spatial” dynamics, utilizing social perception (sentiment maps) and spatial differentiation (housing prices index) pre- and post-pandemic to elucidate the interconnected and interactive nature of uneven development at the urban scale. It employs a multi-dimensional methodological framework integrating morphology analysis of housing conditions, GIS analysis of urban amenities, sentiment semantic analysis of public opinion, and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) analysis of correlation influential factors. Using Suzhou, China, as a pilot study, this research demonstrates how these integrated methods complement each other, exploring how community conditions and resource distribution collectively bolster resilience, thereby maintaining social–spatial equity amidst pandemic disruptions. The findings reveal that uneven resource distribution exacerbates post-pandemic social stratification and spatial differentiation. The proximity of well-maintained ecological environments, such as parks or scenic landmarks, generally exhibits consistency and positive effects on “social–spatial” measurement. Simultaneously, various spatial elements influencing housing prices and social perception show geographic heterogeneity, particularly in areas farther from the central regions of Xiangcheng and Wujiang districts. This study uncovers a bilateral mechanism between social perception and spatial differentiation, aiming to delve into the interdependent relationship between social–spatial equity and built environmental factors. Furthermore, it aspires to provide meaningful references and recommendations for urban planning and regeneration policy formulation in the digital era to sustain social–spatial equity.

The equity of public transport crowding exposure

Public transport crowding exposure is known to cause discomfort, stress and dissatisfaction. However, the distribution and equity of crowding exposure across socioeconomic groups has been largely unexplored. This paper opens a new research topic connecting crowding exposure in public transport to travelers’ socioeconomic characteristics. We present a framework for assessing the equity of in-vehicle crowding exposure based on automatic data sources. Two metrics are considered for quantifying the travelers’ in-vehicle crowding exposure: (1) the excess perceived travel time and (2) the relative excess perceived travel time. The proposed methodology computes the two metrics based on travel diaries and in-vehicle loads inferred from automated fare collection data. We implement Lorenz curves, Gini and Suits coefficients to evaluate horizontal (across the population) and vertical equity (considering income as well as mobility ability and need). The vertical equity is further discussed using clusters of socioeconomic groups and results from spatial lag regression models to assess the distribution of crowding exposure across socioeconomic characteristics. The results for the Stockholm Region case study indicate that crowding exposure varies substantially across the service area, with the highest values found in the denser urban areas close to Stockholm City. We find that the distribution across socioeconomic groups is relatively even, but travelers from areas that are wealthier, higher educated, have higher share of rental housing or lower vehicle ownership areas tend to be exposed to more crowding. The paper provides tools to support public transport planners in decision-making, showing where to intervene to reduce crowding exposure efficiently to achieve urban equity and sustainability.

Urban Equity Measure of Tree Canopy: A case study of New York City

The urban tree canopy is widely recognized as an urban resource that contributes to the physical and mental health of residents, yet tree inequality is widespread. To achieve the goal of promoting tree equity and filling the gap in relevant academic research, this study develops a 2-step 9CNN model to obtain highly accurate urban tree canopy (UTC) data from high-resolution satellite images. New York City tree canopy data is obtained by this new method and correlates with New York City socioeconomic data to examine UTC's horizontal and vertical equity. OLS regression correlations of per capita UTC area with the number of elderly, poor, low-educated, and disabled were used to measure vertical equity. To avoid the interference of spatial autocorrelation, GWR models were used to test for spatial differences in vertical equity. The results of the horizontal equity study show that there is far less UTC space per capita in New York's urban centers than in the fringe areas. Vertical equity in UTC is poor across all of vulnerable groups and is particularly pronounced in some regions. These findings can subsequently help to develop policies for UTC equity and environmental justice concerns.

“I Can’t Breathe:” The Invisible Slow Violence of Breathing Politics in Minneapolis

Following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, his utterance, “I can’t breathe,” reverberated internationally as the world population grappled with the twin specters of life-threatening COVID-19 respiratory morbidities and mounting years under increasingly polarized racist regimes. Despite crisis fatigue, national and international outpourings of solidarity trended on social and mainstream media. However, in this moment, the legacy of structural and slow violences against the living, breathing Minneapolis–St. Paul communities of color were obscured. This article addresses transdisciplinary breathing politics in this mid-sized American city to integrate atmospheric indicators (concentrations of criteria pollutants including particulate matter and gaseous pollutants), traffic indicators (Minnesota Department of Transportation permanent traffic monitoring station data), and social indicators (community responses in newspaper and Twitter archives), ultimately making visible how Floyd’s utterance reflects much deeper patterns of stratified urban public health risks and socio-environmental airscape politics. Bullet Points of Findings Breathing politics are racialized in Minneapolis, demonstrating stark differences in traffic and air quality across neighborhoods. Through content analysis, it is shown that social media platforms like Twitter can be rich historical records for tracking local public discourse, providing valuable insight to the ways people talk about and conceive topics like environmental justice, breathing politics, and urban equity. While hashtag activism on social media flourished in 2020 to address anti-Black racism, it was neither a “tipping point” nor did it show a discernible impact on the nature of environmental justice discourse about breathing politics, despite the steep rise of #ICantBreathe. Integrating social, economic, and environmental indicators has the overarching benefit of addressing complex, lived systems.

Urban Equity as a Challenge for the Southern Europe Historic Cities: Sustainability-Urban Morphology Interrelation through GIS Tools

At a local level, public authorities’ decision making has a significant influence on the development, structure and spatial configuration of the city. For this reason, it is considered essential to combine political positions with urban sustainability criteria, particularly in cities that have been declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. The objective of this research is based on establishing an analysis of the formal relationship between sustainability and spatial morphology in the city of Cáceres, taking into account the urban planning conditions in two areas of study: The Historic Centre (PCH) and the city as a whole. The methodology applies a series of urban indicators from four different fields, namely land use, public space, mobility, and urban complexity, with later GIS analysis using a 1 ha grid pattern. Results show correlation exists between historical zones and the degree of some indicators like density, compactness, acoustic comfort or street proportion, and streetscape, while others seem to depend on further conditions. The case of Caceres provides new findings in the Human Heritage Cities research field for Spain and Southern Europe. Grid pattern analysis has shown to be useful to most of the indicators, although some would require different approaches in the future. The authors consider the use of geoinformation tools as an opportunity for mid-sized and similar historical cities’ policymakers, with our ultimate goal being achieving further equity in urban quality conditions. In conclusion, it is considered that there is a knowledge gap regarding the existence of multiple open data sources belonging to different public administrations and the transformation of these data into useful parameters for their practical application at the citizen level.

Storytelling Networks that Build Community Power: Urban Equity Advocacy From a Communication Infrastructure Lens

Urban scholars suggest that communication can be key to equity advocacy and organizing for social justice in cities, but a gap exists in studies grounded in communication theory. This article theorizes everyday urban equity advocacy through communication infrastructure theory (CIT), an ecological framework grounded in the notion that communities are discursively constructed. Sourced from 34 semi-structured interviews in Chicago, this article examines how organizers from social change-focused organizations activate community storytelling network actors (residents, community organizations, and local media) to advocate for equity. I find that organizers activate this network to cultivate consciousness, build capacity, and amplify equity work for marginalized communities. The study is important in demonstrating how advocating for equity is best when it is an intentional process that activates multi-stakeholder engagement in urban neighborhoods year-round.

The Equity Dimension of Climate Change: Perspectives From the Global North and South

The articles in this thematic issue represent a variety of perspectives on the challenges for equity that are attributable to climate change. Contributions explore an emerging and important issue for communities in the Global North and Global South: the implications for urban social equity associated with the impacts caused by climate change. While much is known about the technical, policy, and financial tools and strategies that can be applied to mitigate or adapt to climate change in communities, we are only now thinking about who is affected by climate change, and how. Is it too little, too late? Or better now than never? The articles in this thematic issue demonstrate that the local impacts of climate change are experienced differently by socio-economic groups in communities. This is especially the case for the disadvantaged and marginalized—i.e., the poor, the very young, the aged, the disabled, and women. Ideally, climate action planning interventions should enhance quality of life, health and well-being, and sustainability, rather than exacerbate existing problems experienced by the disadvantaged. This is the challenge for planners and anyone working to adapt to climate change in our communities.

Leveraging built environment interventions to equitably promote health during and after COVID-19 in Toronto, Canada.

SummaryA key public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the mandate to stay home and practice physical distancing. In Canada, with essential activities such as grocery shopping, outdoor exercise and transportation, people need to be able to safely navigate dense, urban spaces while staying at least two metres or six feet apart. This pandemic has exacerbated the health inequities across neighbourhoods in cities like Toronto, Canada which are often segregated along racial and income lines. These inequities impact who has access to urban infrastructure that promotes health and quality of life. Safety in a time of COVID-19 goes beyond just exposure to the virus, it is complicated by notions of who belongs where, and who has access to what resources. The built environment has a role in maintaining and promoting physical and mental health during this pandemic and beyond it. This paper puts forwards three considerations for built environment interventions to promote health equitably: (i) addressing structural determinants of health and embedding anti-racist intersectional principles, (ii) revisiting tactical urbanism as a health promotion tool and (iii) rethinking community engagement processes through equity-based placemaking. This paper outlines four built environment interventions in Toronto, Canada that seek to address the challenges in navigating urban space safely in the short term, including street design that prioritizes pedestrians, protected cycling infrastructure, access to inclusive green space and safe, affordable housing. Longer-term strategies to create health-promoting urban environments that are equitable are discussed and may be valuable to other cities with similar urban equity concerns.

Measuring Toronto's vital signs – Comparing global and local ideal point analysis in an urban equity case study

Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) offers a unique analytical lens for examining socio-economic indicators within cities. Competing, interrelated criteria are combined to produce a single weighted score for each location or spatial unit. The Toronto Foundation's Vital Signs report provides an annual snapshot of Toronto's quality of life, using ten indicator categories. While the report is published at a city scale, a spatially explicit approach could offer a deeper interpretation of the results. While global MCDA methods can conceal geographic variation, novel local techniques account for spatial heterogeneity in relevant characteristics. In this paper, a localized ideal point method, the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), was applied to the Vital Signs report. The results show more variation and less spatial autocorrelation than the global approach and a simplified representation of the report. GIS researchers are increasingly exploring local MCDA approaches using vector data, but the more complex techniques such as TOPSIS are relatively underdeveloped. This case study aims to fill this conceptual gap and illustrate the applicability of local ideal point analysis in an urban equity context.

Neighbourhood exceptionalism and racial liberalism in the Great Society city: integration as civic showpiece at St Louis’ LaClede Town

AbstractThis article analyses the role of LaClede Town, a nationally lauded housing development in St Louis (USA), in metropolitan and national contests over race, segregation and urban equity from the 1960s to 1990s. Built on the site of a massive slum-clearance project, the federally supported complex gained widespread fame for its startlingly heterogeneous racial mix and ostensibly colour-blind lifestyles. As the article argues, the quasi-utopian language applied to the neighbourhood illustrates the contours and limitations of a 1960s racial liberalism that sought to overcome structural inequalities through face-to-face neighbourly contact. Yet the project's 1990s demise signals that older ideology's supersession by a newly dominant urban neoliberalism.

Constellations versus hero: a conversation with Mary Miss

By developing frameworks of carefully structured art, science, and urban community collaborations, City as Living Laboratory (CALL) forms constellations of projects that aim to make tangible and address environmental concerns, including the climate crisis, urban equity, and health. Founded by the artist Mary Miss, CALL denies the singularity and monumentality of many public art works to instead focus on �constellations� of situated walks, conversations, and initiatives that lead to specific projects. This article, structured around an interview with Mary Miss, discusses the potential of art practices that organise to create change, empowering people and transforming marginalised landscapes. It reveals how such practices can make visible local environmental conditions while also addressing challenges of the climate crisis.

Public transport accessibility accounting for level of service and competition for urban opportunities: An equity analysis for education in Santiago de Chile

Several cities around the world have changed their transportation planning paradigm, understanding that the prime goal is to provide access to opportunities for everyone. To address this goal, public transport plays a fundamental role and, therefore, it is key for developing a sustainable and equitable city.This paper proposes a methodology to analyze access to opportunities through public transport incorporating the user's valuation of attributes that impact the level of service on his/her trip and the competitiveness for urban opportunities. Using data from Santiago, Chile, we applied the proposed methodology to analyze accessibility to higher-quality public primary schools. We compare total travel time (TTT) with a proposed measure of total generalized travel time (TGTT) using simple potential and competitive accessibility indicators, accounting for the subjective valuation of walking time, travel time, waiting time, comfort and transfers, and translating them into in-vehicle time units.We find that the inclusion of competition has a more substantial impact than including the subjective valuation of the level of service in the accessibility to educational opportunities. Using competitive measures with TGTT, we found that around 20% of the zones in Santiago have at least a 50% deficit of higher-quality public education, and 71% of them are in peripheral areas. Furthermore, these zones, where medium and low-income population usually lives, can experience, on average, 1–2 transfers, 4–5 passengers per square meter, and 15-min waiting. We conclude that the proposed methodology provides a more comprehensive way to understand accessibility by incorporating the traveling experience, allowing to determine how and where to intervene to effectively improve accessibility, with a focus on urban equity.

From the urban project to the participative public space project: A historical approach.

This article makes a chronological tour of the main city-making models, from classic to current times, to arrive at the conclusion that citizen participation in decision-making processes on urban projects has ended up conditioning the current working models of the territory, particularly in terms of urban production. Despite the inconsistency between what the broad body of knowledge on cities (Lexis) establishes for the development of citizenship and the often defended and cited citizen rights, and the practice (praxis) of participation, we find that processes that are promoted as being inclusive and with a collective work approach end up becoming, either through omission, lack of knowledge, inexperience or despotism, models that conceal hierarchical power structures and that deny urban equity and justice in public space projects.

Livable Streets and Global Competitiveness: A Survey of Mexico City

Mexico City is rapidly building livable streets (i.e., streets redesigned to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists, and public space users). Livable streets are justified by decision makers as investments to increase urban equity yet tend to reinforce socioeconomic stratification through their location in wealthy and/or gentrifying neighborhoods. Using semi-structured interviews, policy reviews, and participant observation, this article documents Mexico City’s livable streets investments from 2007 to 2018 focusing on their uptake through global networks of knowledge. It argues that livable streets are part of a competitive city economic development strategy fitting comfortably into a planning system that favors neighborhoods with the most economic potential.

Democracy, Exclusion, and White Supremacy: How Should We Think About Exclusionary Zoning?

David Imbroscio’s argument about exclusionary zoning contains several salient arguments that deserve the attention of those working on issues of housing justice, racial justice, and urban equity. Attention to Imbroscio’s concerns can strengthen efforts to produce greater regional equity in American metropolitan areas. I find two main elements of his argument, however, unconvincing. First, his assertion that the anti-exclusionary zoning movement “is underlain by a deep commitment to neoliberalism” is a misreading of the greater history and aims of anti-exclusionist advocacy and scholarship. Second, his claim that anti-exclusionism is anti-democratic suffers from an overly narrow and process-focused concept of democracy that ignores historical and enduring power dynamics of local land-use politics as they are and have been expressed within a system of White racial domination.

Feasibility of Innovative Tools and Methods to Improve Household Surveys in Complex Urban Settings: Multiple Methods Analysis of the Surveys for Urban Equity (SUE) Study in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi

Background: The methods used in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) household surveys have not changed in four decades; however, LMIC societies have changed substantially. This mismatch may result in unintentional exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations. We compare three survey method innovations with standard survey methods in Kathmandu, Dhaka, and Hanoi, and summarize feasibility of our innovative methods in terms of time, cost, skill requirements, and experiences. Methods: We used descriptive statistics and regression techniques to compare respondent characteristics in samples drawn with innovative versus standard survey designs and household definitions, adjusting for sample probability weights and clustering. Feasibility of innovative methods was evaluated using a thematic framework analysis of focus group discussions with survey field staff, and via survey planner budgets. Findings: We found that a common household definition excluded single adult (46.9%) and migrant headed households (6.7%), as well as non-married (8.5%), unemployed (10.5%), disabled (9.3%), and studying (14.3%) adults. Further, standard two-stage sampling resulted in fewer single adult and non-family households than an innovative one-stage design; however, two-stage sampling resulted in more tent and shack dwellers. Our survey innovations provided good value for money and field staff experiences were neutral or positive. Staff recommended streamlining field tools and pairing technical and survey content experts during fieldwork. Interpretation: This evidence of unintentional exclusion of vulnerable and mobile urban populations in LMIC household surveys is deeply concerning, and underscores the need to modernize survey methods and practices. Funding: UK Medical Research Council and UK Economic and Social Research Council. Declaration of Interest: All authors declare no conflicts of interest. Ethical Approval: Ethics approvals were obtained from the University of Leeds (ref:MREC16-137), University of Southampton (ref:26819), Nepal Health Research Council (ref:1761), Bangladesh Medical Research Council (ref:BMRC/NREC/RP/2016-2019/317), and Hanoi University of Public Health (ref:324/2017/YTCC-HD3).