Speaker
Description
Urban greenery offers significant benefits, including mitigating air pollution, alleviating the urban heat island effect, enhancing social interactions, and improving population health. However, in urban areas, some disadvantaged populations may be relegated to less green spaces, limiting their access to fulfilling urban living conditions. Consequently, inequalities in urban greenness have become a critical concern for policymakers.
Despite the growing interest in inequalities in urban greenness, studies in the Australian context have predominantly relied on parkland as an indicator, often overlooking eye-level greenness - an important measure that captures human-centered perceptions of greenery.
Adopting an area-based perspective, this study maps the spatial distribution of Sydney’s eye-level greenness using machine-learning-based greenness extraction from Google Street View images. It then employs Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to analyze the association between neighborhood socio-economic status (including gender, age, marital status, English proficiency, birthplace, Indigenous status, income, car ownership, education, job skill levels, and unemployment) and eye-level greenness at the Statistical Area Level 1 (SA1, equivalent to neighborhoods).
The findings reveal spatial variability in these associations across different urban areas. Older adults in the eastern central areas of Sydney are more likely to experience lower levels of eye-level greenness. Similarly, females, unmarried individuals, non-English speakers, Indigenous people, less-skilled workers, and unemployed individuals are more likely to face insufficient greenness outside the city center. Additionally, individuals born overseas, those with lower incomes, those without car ownership, and those with lower educational attainment tend to have less access to greenery in both city center and suburban areas.
This study advances the discussion on inequalities in urban greenness within the Australian context and contributes to the broader discourse on spatial justice. From a practical perspective, the findings offer valuable insights for policymakers in formulating targeted green space policies for specific areas, thereby mitigating greenness inequalities across urban areas.
| Keywords | Spatial justice; green space inequality; disadvantaged population; Sydney |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
