TY - JOUR
T1 - Parks and safety
T2 - a comparative study of green space access and inequity in five US cities
AU - Williams, T.G.
AU - Logan, T.M.
AU - Zuo, C.T.
AU - Liberman, K.D.
AU - Guikema, S.D.
PY - 2020/9/1
Y1 - 2020/9/1
N2 - © 2020 Elsevier B.V.Safety is an important dimension of access to green space. When parks are perceived as unsafe, people are unlikely to derive the health and community benefits from them. In this study, we examine inequities in green space access in five medium-to-large US cities using parcel-level, network-based analysis. We quantify access using three measures: proximity, congestion-weighted acreage, and crime-constrained proximity. We find that, in the five US cities studied, there is a striking lack of access to safe parks. In addition, inequalities between socioeconomic subgroups are substantially exacerbated when considering access to safe parks, with racial/ethnic minorities and low-income communities fairly consistently worse off. The results suggest that interventions to improve park safety could result in large and immediate improvements for access and environmental justice. However, even once these inequalities are addressed, there remains significant work to provide all residents with sufficient and proximal access to green space and the wide array of benefits that it has to offer.
AB - © 2020 Elsevier B.V.Safety is an important dimension of access to green space. When parks are perceived as unsafe, people are unlikely to derive the health and community benefits from them. In this study, we examine inequities in green space access in five medium-to-large US cities using parcel-level, network-based analysis. We quantify access using three measures: proximity, congestion-weighted acreage, and crime-constrained proximity. We find that, in the five US cities studied, there is a striking lack of access to safe parks. In addition, inequalities between socioeconomic subgroups are substantially exacerbated when considering access to safe parks, with racial/ethnic minorities and low-income communities fairly consistently worse off. The results suggest that interventions to improve park safety could result in large and immediate improvements for access and environmental justice. However, even once these inequalities are addressed, there remains significant work to provide all residents with sufficient and proximal access to green space and the wide array of benefits that it has to offer.
U2 - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103841
DO - 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103841
M3 - Article
SN - 0169-2046
VL - 201
JO - Landscape and Urban Planning
JF - Landscape and Urban Planning
M1 - 103841
ER -