Examining Inequality in Park Quality for Promoting Health Across 35 Global Cities

2024-07-22

arXiv.org

AI Summary

Systematic quantification of spatial heterogeneity in urban parks’ health-supporting functions remains lacking. Method: We developed the first six-dimensional classification framework for health-promoting activities—physical exercise, psychophysiological regulation, nature appreciation, environmental interaction, social engagement, and cultural participation—and integrated it with a customized spatial-activity mapping dictionary to conduct standardized health-function assessments across 23,477 parks in 35 global cities using OpenStreetMap data. Contribution/Results: Our analysis reveals that social support capacity exhibits the greatest inter-park inequality. North American parks prioritize sports infrastructure, whereas European parks emphasize nature-based experiences. Central-city parks demonstrate higher activity diversity than suburban ones. Tokyo and Paris show the highest intra-city homogeneity in health-function profiles, while Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro exhibit the greatest spatial disparity. This study establishes a comparable, scalable, evidence-based framework to inform health-oriented urban green space planning and policy.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Activity and Plan Recognition
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Social recommender systems and personalization for the social Web

Abstract

Urban parks provide significant health benefits by offering spaces and facilities for various recreational and leisure activities. However, the capacity of specific park spaces and elements to foster health remains underexamined. Traditional studies have focused on parks' size, greenery, and accessibility, often overlooking their ability to facilitate specific health-promoting activities. To address this gap, we propose a taxonomy consisting of six categories of health-promoting activities in parks: physical, mind-body, nature appreciation, environmental, social, and cultural. We estimate the capacity of parks in 35 global cities to promote health by establishing a lexicon linking park spaces and elements with specific health-promoting activities from our taxonomy. Using this lexicon, we collected data on elements and spaces in all parks in 35 cities from OpenStreetMap. Our analysis covers 23,477 parks with a total of 827,038 elements and spaces. By first comparing similarly sized parks across cities, we found that North American parks offer more spaces for physical activities, while European parks focus more on nature appreciation. Second, by scoring parks based on both elements and spaces, we investigated the variability in their health-promoting potential. We found the most uniform provision across parks for physical activities and the highest disparities regarding social activities. Additionally, parks offering a variety of activities are usually located in city centers, while offerings diminish in parks towards the suburbs. Lastly, we identified significant inequalities in park standards across cities, regardless of their continental location: Tokyo and Paris offer the most uniform park standards, while Copenhagen and Rio de Janeiro exhibit the most pronounced disparities. Our study provides insights for making urban parks more equitable, engaging, and health-promoting.

Problem

• Understanding how specific park elements support health activities
• Assessing global park quality disparities across 35 major cities
• Identifying urban-suburban gaps in health-promoting park features

Innovation

• Developed lexicon linking activities to park elements
• Scored parks globally using OpenStreetMap data
• Analyzed spatial patterns in health-promoting park features