Social inequity of park accessibility in Taiyuan: highlighting the unfair layout of parks in second-tier cities of China and the relative role of contributors

Figures & data

Table 1. The classification of 337 cities in China.

City Level	Explanation	Features	Total
First-tier City	Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen	Developed, with good geographical resources and competitive advantages.	4
New first-tier City	Municipalities directly under the central government, regional central cities, or provincial capitals and coastal open cities in developed eastern regions	Good economic foundation, convenient transportation and unique urban charm.	15
Second-tier City	Provincial capital cities with relatively active development, economically strong cities in eastern regions or regional central cities in economically developed regions.	Good economic conditions and large city size.	30
Third-tier City	Economically developed cities in the eastern region, key regional cities, and provincial capitals in the western region.	Large-medium-sized cities with relatively developed economies and large economic aggregates.	70
Fourth-tier City	Mainly prefecture-level cities, capitals of some provinces and autonomous regions.	Medium-sized cities with relatively common urban scale, economic development and transportation construction.	90
Fifth-tier City	Economically underdeveloped prefecture-level administrative regions in the western region, and a small number of small- medium-sized cities in the central and eastern regions.	The city is small in scale, with poor economic foundation and inconvenient transportation	128

Table 2. Relevant definitions for special terms in this study.

Special terms	Definitions
Spatial equality	It is defined as the spatial difference in the equality level of resources enjoyed by residents (Longfeng and Kyum Kim 2021).
Social equity	It refers to the extent to which social groups of different ages, economies, identities and statuses enjoy public resources, with particular attention to the interests of some social vulnerable groups (Xiao et al. 2017).
Spatial equity in access	It refers to whether there is spatial disparity in gaining access to urban parks by people in different locations of a city (Rigolon et al. 2018). The issue can be further analyzed from the perspective of demographic characteristics (Wen, Albert and Von Haaren 2020).
Social vulnerable groups	It originated from the field of sociology and was the core concept of social issues and social policy research. It is usually defined by a person’s social status and living conditions. In general, it is considered to be social vulnerable groups, including children, the elderly, ethnic minorities, the disabled, the mentally ill, the unemployed, the poor, laid-off workers, displaced persons, migrant workers, etc., and there is a certain degree of interaction among these groups (Xiao, Wang, and Fang 2019). In this study, social vulnerable groups was defined as teenagers, the elderly, citizens enjoying subsistence allowances, the unemployed, the poor and internal migrants.

Figure 1. The study area in Taiyuan.

Table 3. Relevant descriptions of parks in Taiyuan.

Category	Description	Park Area	Service radius
Urban comprehensive parks (UPs)	Serving residents of the entire urban area, with rich content and high-quality facilities.	≥10 hm^2	2.0–5.0 km
District parks (DPs)	Serving residents in a certain area of the city, with relatively rich leisure facilities.	4 hm^2 –10 hm^2	1.0–2.0 km
Community parks (CPs)	Serving a residential area, with a small number of leisure facilities.	0.5 hm^2 –4 hm^2	0.5–1.0 km
Theme park	There are specific themes, such as botanical gardens, zoos, and martyrs’ cemeteries, etc. Entrance fee is generally required.	-	whole city
Roadside green space	A long and narrow green space along the main roads and expressways of the city, including street square green space, small green areas along the street.	-	0.5–1.0 km

Figure 2. Different types of parks in Taiyuan in 2018.

Table 4. Descriptive statistics of parks in Taiyuan’s districts in 2018.

District	Population (Million)	Total Park Area (ha)			Number of Park			Park Area per Capita (m^2 per person)
		UPs	DPs	CPs	UPs	DPs	CPs	UPs	DPs	CPs
JinYuan (JY)	0.221	2066.1	48.87	60.10	8.00	9.00	8.00	93.31	2.21	2.71
XiaoDian (XD)	0.805	366.50	15.03	54.53	7.00	8.00	18.0	4.56	0.19	0.68
YingZe (YZ)	0.592	268.39	12.41	15.90	9.00	8.00	5.00	4.53	0.21	0.27
XingHualing (XHL)	0.644	194.14	50.46	11.85	6.00	7.00	3.00	3.02	0.78	0.19
WanBailin (WBL)	0.749	549.32	26.43	30.26	8.00	8.00	13.0	7.33	0.35	0.40
JianCaoping (JCP)	0.416	1152.8	60.64	95.88	8.00	11.0	32.0	27.73	1.46	2.04

Park area per capita (m² per person) is the ratio of total park area to the population. UPs, DPs, CPs are abbreviations of urban comprehensive parks, district parks, and community parks, respectively.

Table 5. Descriptive statistics at the grid scale.

Category	Variable	Explanation	Min	Max	Mean	Std.Dev.
Demographiccharacteristic	V1: %Young	It refers to the ratio of people aged under 15	0.00	33.33	7.22	7.72
	V2: %Older	It refers to the ratio of people aged above 65	0.00	49.99	3.88	5.07
	V3: %Men	It refers to the ratio of male population	0.00	100.00	27.27	26.58
	V4: %Women	It refers to the ratio of female population	0.00	100.00	25.08	24.51
	V5: %Marriage	It refers to the ratio of married population	0.00	66.67	15.23	15.61
	V6: %Local city hukou	It refers to people with local hukou under the Chinese household registration system (so-called hukou system). In terms of resource allocation and social welfare, it will be different from migrant hukou.	0.00	100.00	34.38	36.14
	V7: % Subsistence allowance households	It refers to families that enjoy the minimum living security subsidy due to illness or loss of labor in their family members.	0.00	49.99	1.68	4.42
	V8: %Employment	It refers to the ratio of employees to the total population at the year-end.	0.00	65.43	35.44	10.80
	V9: %Unemployment	It refers to the ratio of unemployed people to the total population at the year-end.	0.00	49.99	2.26	4.99
Social-spatial structure	V10: Resident density	Native residents, it refers to the population who actually live in a certain area for a certain period of time (more than half a year). The resident density is the ratio of the number of local residents to the living area.	0.00	1255.32	67.04	155.76
	V11: Migrant density	Internal migrants, it refers to the population from other places in other province. The migrant density is the ratio of the number of migrants to the living area.	0.01	1241.66	49.43	121.71
	V12: Housing price	It refers to the average price of block residence, which is calculated based on the average price of commercial housing in a grid unit.	4169.04	20,758.80	8526.73	2252.42
Socio-economic status	V13: %High income	It refers to the ratio of people who live in commodity housing.	0.00	81.78	28.89	32.43
	V14: %Low income	It refers to the ratio of people who live in rental housing.	0.00	83.90	30.24	28.94

Source: The selection of the above variables is based on the published literatures.

Figure 3. Distribution of commercial housing and rental housing in the study area in 2018.

Figure 4. Population estimation in the study area: (a) Database creation, (b) Building exhibition, and (c) Population distribution in space.

Table 6. The correlation coefficient between different types of population distribution and WorldPop2018.

Category	Spearman	Pearson
Weighted population distribution (at the grid level)	0.703**	0.693**
Unweighted population distribution (at the grid level)	0.655**	0.645**
Unweighted population distribution (at the county level)	0.654**	0.579**

**. means significant correlation at 0.01 level.

Figure 5. Linear relationship between population distribution based on the sixth census and the WorldPop2018 in Taiyuan.

Figure 6. Research flowchart.

Figure 7. Gini coefficient and Lorenz curve.

Figure 8. Spatial accessibility to different types of parks in Taiyuan (Quantile classification is used to divide the accessibility results into five categories): (a) is the accessibility to UPs (AUPs), (b) is the accessibility to DPs (ADPs), (c) is the accessibility to CPs (ACPs), and (d) is the total accessibility of parks (ATPs) in a certain area (the sum of the accessibility of three types of parks).

Figure 9. Accessibility of different types of parks per block group.

Figure 10. Box plot comparison of park accessibility in different districts.

Figure 11. Spearman’s correlation coefficient results.

Figure 12. Ridge plots for different types of parks and variables.

Table 7. Ridge regression results.

Variable	AUPs		ADPs		ACPs		ATPs
	coef.	p	coef.	p	coef.	p	coef.	p
V1: %Young	0.001	0.210	0.003***	0.000	0.010**	0.009	0.001	0.561
V2: %Older	0.007**	0.004	−0.002**	0.007	−0.013***	0.000	0.003	0.111
V3: %Men	0.000	0.109	0.004***	0.000	−0.002	0.593	0.001	0.455
V4: %Women	0.007**	0.006	0.004**	0.000	0.005	0.149	0.007***	0.000
V5: %Marriage	0.013***	0.000	−0.002***	0.000	−0.011**	0.005	−0.001*	0.049
V6: %Local city hukou	0.015***	0.000	0.004***	0.000	0.024**	0.003	0.011***	0.000
V7: %Subsistence allowance households	0.016***	0.000	0.018***	0.000	0.030***	0.000	0.018***	0.000
V8: %Employed	−0.074***	0.000	−0.006***	0.000	−0.011**	0.006	−0.054***	0.000
V9: %Unemployed	0.001	0.263	−0.009***	0.000	−0.021***	0.000	−0.004*	0.030
V10: Resident density	0.013*	0.047	0.053***	0.000	0.024**	0.004	0.024***	0.000
V11: Migration density	−0.004	0.325	−0.041***	0.000	0.012	0.101	−0.013**	0.002
V12: Housing price	0.215***	0.000	0.039*	0.031	−0.143***	0.000	0.127***	0.000
V13: %High income	0.001	0.139	0.002*	0.032	0.003	0.715	0.001	0.251
V14: %Low income	0.002	0.142	0.001	0.393	0.023**	0.010	0.003*	0.050
_cons	0.653**	0.002	−0.491**	0.004	2.143***	0.000	1.693***	0.000
Adj. R-squared	0.211		0.221		0.105		0.162
F	57.234		113.765		48.014		40.859
Sig F	0.000**		0.000**		0.000**		0.000**
K	0.18		0.17		0.15		0.20

N=5640 * p<0.05, ** p<0.01，***p<0.001

Figure 13. The relationship between adjusted R-square and K for different types of parks.

Figure 14. Bivariate LISA map of parks accessibility and statistically disadvantaged variables in Taiyuan (V₂: %old; V₅: %marriage; V₈: %employed; V₉: %unemployed; V₁₁: Migration density).

Figure 15. Spatial distribution of the center of gravity and direction of parks in Taiyuan.

Longfeng, W., and S. Kyum Kim. 2021. “Exploring the Equality of Accessing Urban Green Spaces: A Comparative Study of 341 Chinese Cities.” Ecological Indicators 121. doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107080.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Xiao, Y., Z. Wang, Z. Li, and Z. Tang. 2017. “An Assessment of Urban Park Access in Shanghai – Implications for the Social Equity in Urban China.” Landscape and Urban Planning 157: 383–393. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2016.08.007.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Rigolon, A., M. Browning, K. Lee, and S. Shin. 2018. “Access to Urban Green Space in Cities of the Global South: A Systematic Literature Review.” Urban Science 2 (3): 67. doi:10.3390/urbansci2030067.

 Google Scholar

Wen, C., C. Albert, and C. Von Haaren. 2020. “Equality in Access to Urban Green Spaces: A Case Study in Hannover, Germany, with a Focus on the Elderly Population.” Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 55. doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126820.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Xiao, Y., D. Wang, and J. Fang. 2019. “Exploring the Disparities in Park Access Through Mobile Phone Data: Evidence from Shanghai, China.” Landscape and Urban Planning 181: 80–91. doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.09.013.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study were derived from the National Bureau of Statistics at http://www.stats.gov.cn, the Taiyuan municipal government website at http://ylj.taiyuan.gov.cn/and other resources available in the public domain. Derived data are available from the corresponding author.