A Flowmap–geographic information systems approach to determine community neighbourhood park proximity in Cape Town

Abstract

Within the context of territorial justice, geographical research has been focusing increasingly on service delivery (more specifically urban parks) in an effort to determine who benefits and why. Parks benefit people by providing a sustainable community and a higher quality of life. Apartheid planning left a legacy of inequality in park delivery, and even existing South African park literature dates back to the apartheid era, providing only limited scope, without any thorough analysis of community neighbourhood park (CNP) proximity to residents. Consequently, this paper provides a spatial analytical overview of the distribution of CNPs in the City of Cape Town (CoCT) by mapping CNP availability per socio-economic area, and determining CNP proximity alone and with certain capacity constraints. The most important literature pertaining to the application of geographic information systems to determine park proximity is also outlined. Results indicate that environmental injustice exists even today; although all income groups suffer in certain areas with poor CNP proximity, it remains the poorest in low-income suburbs where some people walk or travel further than the maximum acceptable distance of 15 minutes to a CNP. Finally, suggestions are made to the City Parks Department to improve CNP delivery and distribution in the CoCT.

Keywords::

• community neighbourhood parks
• community neighbourhood park proximity
• Cape Town
• Flowmap
• geographic information systems

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Gerbrand Mans from the CSIR for his input in the Flowmap analyses, the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions to improve this paper and Professor Ronnie Donaldson for his proficient guidance and comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

^1. The unequal service delivery situation during apartheid (i.e. the inequitable delivery of parks in South Africa) shows many similarities with the Jim Crow ideology that was followed in the USA between 1948 and the 1960s. During this time, the USA had segregated urban park systems that provided proportionately equal facilities for white people and people of colour. Other park facilities were only open to people of colour for one day per week. Many white people resorted to intimidation or violence to exclude people of colour from ‘their’ recreational areas (Byrne, 2012; Wolch et al., 2005).