Exploring the equality of accessing urban green spaces: A comparative study of 341 Chinese cities

• We investigated the access to urban green spaces and parks in 341 cities in China. • Gini Coefficients are adopted to measure the equality of access in each city. • We found spatial discrepancies of the equality of access across the country. • We explored the relationship between equality of access and cities’ features. Despite multiple benefits of green space for urban residents, the investigations on equality of access to green space are scarce. Most focused on individual cities and the results were inconsistent due to the varying definitions, scales, and evaluation methods employed within each. This study intends to address this gap by developing two indexes based on the Gini Coefficient to compare the inequality of access to urban green spaces across all 341 prefecture-level cities of China. An urban green space equality index (UGSE) measures the distribution of overall urban vegetation within a city. A park green space equality index (PGSE) focuses on the equality level of public access to parks. The UGSE and PGSE at the national scale are 0.490 and 0.848. Strong disparities have been found in both UGSE and PGSE across the country using the local indicator of spatial autocorrelation (LISA). Regression analysis shows equality of green space is significantly related to GDP per capita, population density, and urban land area. Urban greening related policies are not significantly associated with equality, suggesting that a lack of concern might exist among Chinese cities for the spatial equality of urban green space implementation. These findings can help decision makers evaluate regional disparities in urban green space equality, thereby providing location-specific interventions for more inclusive and equal provisioning of urban green spaces.