An Exploration of Spatial and Social Inequalities of Urban Sports Facilities in Nanning City, China

Abstract

Health and well-being have become important dimensions of urban sustainability, particularly in countries with rapid urbanization and aging populations. As such, providing opportunities for physical activity and exercise has become a priority in the planning and governance of Healthy City in these countries. Relatively little research has investigated the provision of sports facilities in developing countries. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the spatial and social inequality of sports facilities at the urban scale using Nanning City in South China as a case study. Spatial aggregate analyses, including an allocation index, accessibility, diversity, and geographically weighted regression, were applied to mixed data sets from primary and secondary sources from 2018. The results confirmed a strong inequality of sports facilities provision across the study area and between age groups. This study suggests that the reduction of inequality and the improvement of equity and social justice should consider the spatial and social matches between demand and supply, through increasing sports facilities investment intensity and road network density.

Computing geographical access to services: The design of a client–server solution that incorporates multiple transport modes

“…The methods applied within this article extend previous approaches to measuring accessibility in several ways. Firstly, they provide a more detailed analysis of accessibility to sports facilities than those described in previously published studies (Cereijo et al., 2019; Karusisi et al., 2013; Shen et al., 2020; Shrestha et al., 2019). Rather than simple metrics such as nearest facility or cumulative opportunity, we compute E2SFCA scores.…”

“…Several previous studies have been concerned with developing spatial tools to investigate variations in access to sporting infrastructure. These have adopted a range of technical approaches, including those that measure distance or travel impedance to the nearest provider, or studies that adopt cumulative opportunities approaches to count the number of providers present within a given time or distance of potential customers (e.g., Cereijo et al., 2019; Karusisi, Thomas, Méline, & Chaix, 2013; Shen, Cheng, Huang, & Zeng, 2020; Shrestha, Kestens, Thomas, El Aarbaoui, & Chaix, 2019), whilst others implement more sophisticated methods based on gravity modelling approaches (e.g., Billaudeu et al., 2011; Bryant & Delamater, 2019; Martori, Apparicio, & Séguin, 2020).…”

Spatial Equity of Public Parks: A Case Study of Kabul City, Afghanistan

“…Urban settings in different countries have significant inequalities in the distribution of physical infrastructure that affect residents' quality of life; for example, residents in historic quarters of Changting in China, Glasgow in the UK and Berlin in Germany suffer from lack of access to basic services such as transportation, health care, and green space [1,3,[13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…Sustainability 2021, 13, 1516 2 of 13 The positive and negative aspects, i.e., the health risks from being distanced from nature and the benefits of being close to it, are not homogeneously distributed throughout major cities [18,19]. When looking at deprived urban areas within a city, it is easy to conclude that residents are at greater health risks from natural and manmade hazards, including natural disasters, pollution, noise, and traffic toxicity [20].…”

“…When looking at deprived urban areas within a city, it is easy to conclude that residents are at greater health risks from natural and manmade hazards, including natural disasters, pollution, noise, and traffic toxicity [20]. In these deprived areas, access to the natural ecosystem is limited, especially in terms of access to natural landscapes, and there is a disparity between high population density and the low coverage of green space [3,5,7,13,15].…”