An Assessment of Urban Park Access Using House-Level Data in Urban China: Through the Lens of Social Equity

Abstract

The various benefits of urban green space are gaining increasing attention nowadays. Hence, the distribution of green space has become a scrutinized concern for spatial equity among local governments and the planning scholars. This study is the first quantitative evaluation of urban park accessibility using house-level data in urban China, from the perspective of social equity. We chose Nanjing as the empirical case and examined 2709 real estate units and 79 parks within the city. Accessibility is measured by the 10-min walking distance from homes to the adjacent urban parks. Using the Street Network Analysis model in ArcGIS and the statistical methods in SPSS, the result shows that 60.5% of the real estates in Nanjing are located within a 10-min walk to access urban parks. However, this accessibility is positively correlated with housing prices, and negatively correlated with the age of the buildings, holding all other factors constant. While affluent homeowners capture a high-quality green amenity, newly-built low-income communities, where most residents are classified as a vulnerable population, have the lowest percentage of accessible green space. This study reveals the existing spatial disparities of urban park accessibility among different socio-economic groups in Nanjing, China. Additionally, we found that urban redevelopment projects with greening and the large-scale affordable housing construction are pricing out the urban poor and rural immigrants from the inner city to the urban peripheral areas. This will reduce the accessibility to urban parks and other public service facilities among the lower income families, and exacerbate the inequality among the rich and the poor in terms of their quality of life. Main findings of this study can inform policy decisions regarding equitable park provision in the construction of the green city and the sustainable development in urban China and other developing countries.

Environmental Justice and Urban Parks. A Case Study Applied to Tarragona (Spain)

“…This work has not considered the quality of the parks as a factor of environmental justice because urban green areas are relevant for the urban quality of life and for promoting environmental equity [46]. For their part, some authors [47] believe that in order to determine environmental justice, the accessibility and availability of green areas, you have to also consider their quality. The results from their analysis, combined with the socioeconomic characteristics, broaden the understanding of environmental justice with respect to the parks.…”

Assessing the Spatial Distribution Pattern of Street Greenery and Its Relationship with Socioeconomic Status and the Built Environment in Shanghai, China

“…While urban green canopies derived from remotesensing methods such as satellite images could quantify urban green spaces [49], they fail to evaluate people's sensory functions. In addition, this kind of intuitive perception of residents, GVI, also takes the human-oriented perspective into consideration, giving a novel comprehension compared to former studies based on the accessibility of different social groups to urban parks [23,28,50]. An indicator based on residents' demand-side perceptions is used to replace the supply side accessibility calculated for urban green spaces.…”

“…In addition, Nesbitt et al concluded that social groups with highereducation degrees and higher incomes have more access to urban vegetation in 10 US cities [22]. Another study in Nanjing, China, revealed that the accessibility of urban parks is positively related to housing prices and negatively related to the age of buildings [23]. According to the former studies, urban parks, urban green spaces, and street greenery, which might be accessible more frequently in daily life, should be focused on to evaluate the equity of its spatial distribution.…”

Equity Measurement of Public Sports Space in Central Urban Areas Accessible by Walking and Public Transportation Based on Residential Scale Data

“…The distance calculation method has also experienced the transformation from Euclid distance and Manhattan distance to network distance based on the urban road network. With the development of network analysis module of GIS, more and more vector-based road network distance assessment methods have been applied to the study of spatial equity [9,14,15] 。…”