Socio-Spatial (In)Equality of Access to Urban Green Space: A Case in Beijing

Abstract

Green space, as an important component of urban system, deliver multiple benefits to urban residents. From an ecosystem service perspective, these benefits include: provisioning services, regulating services, supporting services, and cultural services. Unfortunately, studies have confirmed that green spaces are not equally accessible among different socio-economic groups in urban areas. Such unequal socio-spatial pattern of accessing green spaces lead to many other undesirable outcomes including social segregation, dislocation, and gentrification, and finally causes exclusive urban development benefiting a smaller portion of population. It is in this context that my dissertation explores how urban green spaces and their varying benefits accessible for different social groups intertwining with geo-morphological, historical, socio-economic, and political factors in complex urban circumstances by using Beijing as a case. Relying on multiple open source data sets and spatial statistical analyses, this dissertation addresses three major questions: 1) How are urban green spaces distributed among socio-economic groups (a cross sectional study in 2017)? 2) Are urban green spaces more often provided to advantaged socio-economic groups (a longitudinal study 2000-2010)? And 3) Does adding new green space gentrify the neighboring communities in Beijing, thus resulting in the dislocation of marginalized groups? In the cross-sectional study, the results indicate the public green spaces tend to serve marginalized groups more, while advantaged socio-economic groups are better served by internal vegetations in the gated communities in which they live. The results of longitudinal study did not identify significant associations between the changes of green spaces and the socio-economic statuses in Township (census tract unit), indicating afforestation process exerts little discrimination against marginalized groups. Finally, adding new green spaces can trigger gentrification by increasing the housing prices in the neighboring communities, although the capitalization scale of green spaces depends based on a variety of features. Distance to a property, area, vegetation quality, presence of water features, and types of green space all play different roles in affecting the housing price thus having divergent capacities of triggering gentrification.