Search

For the administrative districts of the city of Ufa (the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia), the distribution of green spaces, including public green spaces, the degree of greening, and the accessible green spaces per resident, were analysed. Green spaces were estimated to be available for the citizens within 400 m (for multi-story building areas), 800 m (for low-rise building areas), and 1250 m (for all residential areas). The analysis relies on open geographic system tools and open spatial data. Data are compared with existing governmental regulations and recommendations. Green stands to cover approximately 35% of the city area (indicating that Ufa is one of the greenest among the 16 million-plus Russian cities), and most forest sites are located outside the city centre. Meanwhile, public green spaces cover less than 5% of the city and are unevenly spread across administrative urban districts. The major recreation facilities are situated in the city centre. Despite the high level of greening in Ufa on the whole, access to public areas in multi-story building areas within a 400 m radius and low-rise building areas within an 800 m radius is not guaranteed for city residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses a challenging global problem, insufficient accessible urban public green space, based on building typology. Offering sufficient public green spaces and maintaining the equalities of citizens' accessibility in high-intensity urban cities has been increasingly challenging. Thus, providing adequate and accessible green public spaces by 2030 is a sub-goal of SDGs No. 11. Solving this urban problem is commonly considered the responsibility of urban planning; however, the potential of buildings is scarcely discussed in academia. Luckily, in the industry, many top architecture firms (studios) have tapped the particular potential of buildings via design practice. This practice-led research aims to understand the efforts made by industrial circles. Based on the fieldwork worldwide, this study proposes a 'spiral space' building typology to work as a conceptual framework for this emerging field. The key benefit of this building typology—incremental production of public green spaces—is qualitatively verified, and the good flexibility and international acceptance of this building typology are demonstrated based on global cases. This work could serve as a basis for future research on how buildings could play a greater role in supporting urban sustainability, such as enhancing the residents' accessibility to public green space in metropolises. In addition, the building typology and corresponding design strategies discussed herein could also serve as references for future design practice for architects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public green spaces have a high potential for a positive impact on people's health and wellbeing, especially in urban areas. Studies on environmental justice indicate socially unequal access possibilities to urban green spaces. This article presents results on associations between individual socioeconomic position (SEP) and walking time from home to public green spaces in young people living in urban areas with more than 20,000 inhabitants in Germany. Data were derived from the German Environmental Survey for Children and Adolescents 2014-2017 (GerES V), the environmental module of the German Health Interview and Examination Survey for Children and Adolescents (KiGGS Wave 2). The sample comprises 1149 participants aged 3 to 17 years. A total of 51.5% of the participants reach a public green space on foot within five and 72.8% within ten minutes from home. The lower the participant's SEP, the longer the walking time. Logistic regression models controlling for age group, sex, migration background, and region of residence show that participants with a low SEP have a significantly higher risk (odds ratio = 1.98; 95% confidence interval: 1.31-2.99) of needing more than ten minutes to walk from home to a public green space than participants with a high SEP. GerES V data indicate that young people living in urban areas in Germany do not equally benefit from the health-promoting potential of green spaces, which is an important aspect of environmental health inequalities.

This paper examines the accessibility of urban green spaces within the Syrian city of Aleppo before the civil war using an environmental justice approach by indicating the current state of the parameters proximity and quantity in relation to the socioeconomic status of the inhabitants. Therefore, we conducted the average nearest neighbour analysis, facilities over and under coverage analysis, network analysis and a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test followed by a post-hoc Tukey honestly significant difference (HSD) test. The findings clearly indicate that the spatial pattern of the distribution of public parks facilities was significantly clustered (p-value < 0.0001), with a z-score of −16.4. Several neighbourhoods within the western and central parts of the city were identified to have a higher density of facilities, while the majority of the neighbourhoods located in the marginal parts in eastern Aleppo (low income) lack access to urban green spaces. The hierarchy-wise analysis reveals a strong deficit of urban green spaces at lower hierarchies, for example pocket parks and neighbourhood parks, while access to quarter parks and district parks is high. The urban green spaces at higher hierarchies are located in high and middle socioeconomic status areas. Regarding social segregation in park distribution and their accessibility, the data showed that high income neighbourhoods enjoy a significantly higher percentage of park facilities. The approach presented in this paper offers a generic method for the future development of public green spaces for balanced and sustainable planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]