Evaluating the accessibility of urban parks and waterfronts through online map services: A case study of Shaoxing, China



Zhou, Shuang, Chen, Fei ORCID: 0000-0001-8168-507X and Xu, Zhen
(2022) Evaluating the accessibility of urban parks and waterfronts through online map services: A case study of Shaoxing, China. URBAN FORESTRY & URBAN GREENING, 77. p. 127731.

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Abstract

Regular access to natural environment has many physical and mental health benefits for urban residents. This study was to evaluate the accessibility of urban parks and waterfronts in a Chinese canal city at the household level. Shaoxing, a typical canal town in the Yangtze River Delta region of China, was selected as the case study because of its abundant but underused natural resources. The study had measured the shortest travel routes from individual households to parks and waterfronts using data from the online map service and intensive fieldwork. The results showed that only 22% of Shaoxing residents live within a 500 m walking distance to parks, but scenario analysis showed if the canals were well used, almost all the residents would have access to natural environment within 15 min’ walk. Thus, the route-based accessibility evaluation method developed in this research offers a fine-grained understanding of household inequality in access to natural environments. It not only provides specific recommendations for planning intervention to improve the accessibility of natural resources in Shaoxing, but also contributes to the advancement of accessibility measures for planning practice. This route-based measure makes it possible to combine other accessibility measures of the travel routes such as sidewalk qualities in future research. The simplicity of this method means that it can be used to evaluate accessibility to other public facilities at the household level to develop walkable neighborhoods in cities.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Urban park, Waterfront space, Walking route, Catchment area, Online map service, Scenario analysis
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 12 Sep 2022 10:10
Last Modified: 14 Sep 2023 01:30
DOI: 10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127731
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3164350