Who benefits from access to green space? A case study from Sheffield, UK

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Abstract

Green spaces play a crucial role in supporting urban ecological and social systems, a fact recognised in public policy commitments in both the UK and Europe. The amount of provision, the distribution of green space and the ease of access to such spaces are key contributors to social and ecological function in urban environments. We measured distance along the transport network to public green space available to households in Sheffield, and compared this with the distribution of private garden space. In addition, we used a geodemographic database, Mosaic UK, to examine how access to green space varies across different sectors of society. Public green spaces are chronically underprovided relative to recommended targets. For example, 64% of Sheffield households fail to meet the recommendation of the regulatory agency English Nature (EN), that people should live no further than 300 m from their nearest green space. Moreover, this figure rises to 72% if we restrict attention to municipal parks recognised by the local council. There is an overall reduction in coverage by green space when moving from neighbourhoods where green space is primarily publicly provided to those where it is privately provided. While access to public green space varies significantly across different social groups, those enjoying the greatest access include more deprived groups and older people. This study highlights the need for additional green space to be created and existing green space to be protected in light of increasing development pressure.

Introduction

The condition of green spaces underpins the functioning of urban ecosystems. Public parks and private gardens play a critical role in supporting biodiversity and providing important ecosystem services in urban areas (Bolund and Hunhammar, 1999, Crane and Kinzig, 2005, Gaston et al., 2005, Smith et al., 2005). They also provide the primary contact with biodiversity and the ‘natural’ environment for many people (Jorgensen et al., 2002), may influence the physical and mental well-being of those people (Ulrich et al., 1991, Takano et al., 2002, Jackson, 2003), and, in the case of public green space, can offer broader social benefits as meeting places that give a shared focus to diverse communities and neighbourhoods (Germann-Chiari and Seeland, 2004, Martin et al., 2004). Despite these benefits, many urban green spaces are disappearing (Hörnsten and Fredman, 2000, Pauleit et al., 2005, Yli-Pelkonen and Niemela, 2005). Householders moving away from the city of Leuven, Belgium, cited the lack of accessible public green space as the main reason for leaving (Tratsaert, 1998, cited in Van Herzele and Wiedemann, 2003). With growing and increasingly urbanised populations (Stanners and Bourdeau, 1995, ODPM, 2002), the demand for more land to be released for development can be intense. For example, a lack of regional co-ordination in green space provision accompanied rapid urban growth in Copenhagen during the 1990s, resulting in pressure on the green space network (Caspersen et al., 2006).

Regulatory agencies recognise the importance of safeguarding the provision of green space in urban areas. In Europe, the European Environment Agency (EEA) recommends that people should have access to green space within 15 min walking distance. A Europe-wide assessment of access to green space reported that all citizens in Brussels, Copenhagen, Glasgow, Gothenburg, Madrid, Milan and Paris live within 15 min walk of urban green space, as well as the residents of many smaller cities (Stanners and Bourdeau, 1995). More stringently, English Nature (EN), a UK government agency, recommends that “people living in towns and cities should have an accessible natural green space less than 300 m from home” (English Nature, 2005; see also Harrison et al., 1995, Barker, 1997, Handley et al., 2003, Wray et al., 2005). Also, the ease of access to local green space and countryside is one of the indicators devised for implementing England's Biodiversity strategy in towns, cities and other developments and, by this, ensuring that biodiversity conservation is integral to sustainable urban communities (Wray et al., 2005). However, we know of no objective accounting efforts that estimate whether the distance-based access conditions are met (see also Wray et al., 2005). When evaluating public policy commitments like these, it is not enough only to know what level of access to green space the “average” person enjoys. Rather, policy-makers want to know how access to public green space varies across society, and whether those who enjoy the greatest access include those who are most in need.

We measured the access to public green space available to households in a major UK city and examined how this varies across different sectors of society. We also contrasted levels of provision of public green space with the availability of private green space.

Section snippets

Sampling methods

Sheffield is the fifth largest municipality in the UK, and the ninth largest urban area, with a population of approximately 512,500 (Beer, 2005, ONS, 2005). The city's administrative boundaries extend over a region of more than 360 km2 (Sheffield City Council, 1991), but we limited our study to the smaller predominantly urbanised area of approximately 160 km2 in which nearly all of the population live (Fig. 1a). To the east, this is principally defined by the boundaries of Sheffield and the

Distance to green space

Distances of households to green space vary greatly across Sheffield (Fig. 1b). The frequency distribution of these distances is strongly right skewed (Fig. 2a), with a mean and median distance to public green space of 416.8 and 375.2 m, respectively. Only 36.5% of urban households in Sheffield meet English Nature's recommendation that each person should have green space no further than 300 m or 5 min walk from their home. The 95.6% of the households meet the European Environment Agency

Discussion and conclusions

Green spaces play an important role in supporting urban communities both ecologically and socially. In the UK, their importance has been recognised in public policy commitments aiming to ensure ready access to green space for all. We assessed how well these policy targets are being met across a representative city in the UK. We also examined how green space provision varied across different sectors of society. To undertake this assessment, we examined access provision for two different cases:

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the University of Sheffield Knowledge Transfer Opportunities Fund and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (through the CityForm Research Consortium), and was made possible by Experian's Business Strategies Division. MasterMap topographic data and address point data were kindly supplied by Ordnance Survey, by licence through the CityForm Consortium. We thank Justin Armsworth, John Trencher, Robin Howick, Alison Loram and three anonymous referees for

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