Assessing Urban Green Spaces Availability: A Comparison Between Planning Standards and a High-Fidelity Accessibility Evaluation

Abstract

The spatial distribution and availability of accessible Urban Public Green Spaces (UPGS) represents an important measure of spatial inequality, and touches some of the major goals of urban sustainability, including an equitable improvement of ecosystems services and public health. The traditional tools for the assessment of UPGS availability frequently used in the planning practice are often inadequate to capture relevant features of UPGS availability and accessibility, neglecting the intricacies of urban space. To show this, we propose a comparison between UPGS availability evaluated through a conventional method of “planning standards” and that of a “high-fidelity” accessibility evaluation model. For the latter we employ the method of UPGS distance-cumulative-deficit (UPGS-DCD) index, which we have recently constructed. The comparative analysis was applied to the city of Cagliari (Italy) in order to verify the differences between the results of the two assessment methods. In light of these results, we suggest that UPGS planning, and urban planning and design in general, should employ more adequate assessment methods, grounded on more appropriate assumptions on the behaviours of city users and a more accurate representation of urban space. Following this, we suggest that the proposed UPGS-DCD index offers a viable tool for supporting urban planning, policy, and design.