Assessing use of urban green spaces to inform planning for biodiversity and equitable access

authored by

Fritz Kleinschroth

Abstract

Urban densification is an important goal for city planning to reduce the pressure of urban sprawl on natural ecosystems. However, resilient cities also need to provide equitable access to green spaces for human well-being and at the same time leave room for biodiversity. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing attention is being given to urban green spaces and their use and accessibility as an indicator for what is important to city dwellers. For global comparison, we conducted a systematic review of urban green spaces use during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns. Our analysis reveals a surprisingly large discrepancy in the use of green spaces in different parts of the world which we can largely attribute to financial prosperity. However, a comparison of different methods to assess green space use is still lacking and it remains unclear if different methods lead to different results. In this paper, we
will re-analyze our comprehensive systematic review dataset derived from 178 studies in 5 languages, covering 60 countries. We will categorize the methods ranging from counts on the ground, surveys and GPS tracking to social media analyses and Google mobility data. We will assess if these different methods lead to contrasting outcomes in detecting increases and decreases in green space use. We will further differentiate between different types of green spaces such as parks, forests, and gardens. Using access to green spaces as an indicator for resilient urban futures will allow further analyses of how to achieve equity in access to green spaces. To counter the apparent shortage in green spaces, urban planning cannot rely exclusively on counting park users, but needs to make best use of diverse methods to assess
accessibility to all kinds of natural areas in and around cities.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Environmental Planning

Type

Conference abstract

Pages

60-61

Publication date

2024

Publication status

Published

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities

Electronic version(s)

https://conference.ioer.info/fileadmin/user_upload/tagung/files/IOER-Conference2024_Book-of-Abstracts_240910.pdf (Access: Open)