Realising the Sustainable Development Goal 11.7 in the post-pandemic era – A case study of Taiwan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted our daily lives worldwide. For instance, pandemic-prevention policies restrict people’s mobility, which causes problems in accessing urban greenspaces. Indeed, unequal access to urban greenspace has been accentuated during the most stringent lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Amid such challenging circumstances, there has been a growing attention placed on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11.7, which has brought opportunities for urgent action. In this paper, we applied the Gini coefficient to our analysis of unequal access to urban greenspaces across all urban planning areas in six special municipalities in Taiwan. Moreover, we also conducted comparative analyses between the Gini coefficient and other socio-economic factors. The results show that approximately 63.98% of the urban planning area suffers from unequal access to greenspaces. In addition, urban greenspace provision and household income show significant positive correlations with the Gini coefficient, which reflects Taiwan’s environmental injustice. Furthermore, these findings can help city planners and decision-makers evaluate levels of equality in each urban planning area and decide which priority areas should be improved. Finally, this study can also be used as a reference for decision-makers to realise SDG 11.7 in the post-pandemic era.

Do We Need Different Urban Green Spaces Now? A Case Study of Preferences during Pandemics

“…This aligns well with other research that indicated a lack of social distancing and crowded UGSs as a main concern, for instance in New York City [52]. Empirical research in Taiwan showed that two-thirds of the urban planning area suffers from unequal access to UGSs, and this unequal access has been stressed during the lockdowns [53]. A study in Malaysia showed that the size of existing UGSs is insufficient in terms of compliance with the parameters, especially Malaysia's social distancing requirements [54].…”

The innovative role of cities in solving global problems with local solutions

“…The second surprise was that I could find no reference to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) despite the fact that SDG11 is focused on urban areas. That said, SDGs are only beginning to be a topic of research in EPB; see, e.g., and Thomas et al (2021) and Hsu et al (2023). However, it does seem to reinforce the disconnect between national monitoring programs and what is happening at the local level, even though implementation of the SDGs requires engagement with local communities and subnational governments in order to be successful.…”