Urban Green Infrastructure Accessibility: Investigating Environmental Justice in a European and Global Green Capital

Urban Green Infrastructure Accessibility: Investigating Environmental Justice in a European and Global Green Capital

Access to green spaces offers numerous benefits to citizens and is key to achieving environmental justice. This article explores accessibility to green infrastructure (GI) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, the European and Global Green Capital in 2012 and 2019. Vitoria-Gasteiz was selected as a case study...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Land (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 8; p. 1534
Main Authors: Ruiz-Apilánez, Borja, Ormaetxea, Estitxu, Aguado-Moralejo, Itziar
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-08-2023
Subjects:
3-30-300 rule
Accessibility
Analysis
Biodiversity
Case studies
Cities
Environmental justice
Gentrification
Green infrastructure
Heart rate
Infrastructure
Infrastructure (Economics)
Mental health
Nature
Neighborhoods
Public health
Socioeconomic factors
space syntax
spatial configuration
Urban areas
urban green infrastructure
Urban planning
Urbanism
Spain
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Summary:Access to green spaces offers numerous benefits to citizens and is key to achieving environmental justice. This article explores accessibility to green infrastructure (GI) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, the European and Global Green Capital in 2012 and 2019. Vitoria-Gasteiz was selected as a case study because it combines actions aimed at promoting green infrastructure in the city along with an urban model that in recent years has favored more expansive urbanism. Manhattan distance and configurational analysis is used to investigate accessibility to the most relevant elements of the GI system and their integration in the urban tissue. Considering the actual pedestrian mobility network, configurational accessibility is examined globally and locally with 1 km and 300 m radii. The analysis reveals great differences both in global and local configurational accessibility across fifty components of the GI system that are greater than 0.5 ha and open for public use. It also shows that, while almost all inhabitants (97.9%) reside within 1 km from these green areas, 27.7% of the population live more than 300 m away. The investigation demonstrates the need to improve the city’s GI to provide universal accessibility to green spaces. It offers useful methods that planning professionals and local administrations can use to assess residents’ access to green areas and guide future GI transformation and development towards environmental justice.
ISSN:2073-445X
2073-445X
DOI:10.3390/land12081534