The relationship between the distribution and use patterns of parks and their spatial accessibility at the city level: A case study from Tehran, Iran

Parks are recognised as important elements of urban green infrastructure and for providing many benefits to city residents. In countries where urban growth is unplanned and sprawling, green space provision falls behind, inadequate amounts are provided or spaces are not located in the most effective places. Tehran, the capital of Iran, has experienced huge growth in population and corresponding sprawl in recent years. There has been no study of the effectiveness of parks as part of the range of green spaces in the city − their location, accessibility within the urban structure, relationship to the socio-demographic character of the population, amount per capita or quality and condition. Using a combination of existing data supplemented by new data from site surveys, this study firstly looked at the citywide scale of public open space in relation to population and socio-economic patterns. Second, a representative sample of 16 parks was examined in terms of their accessibility within the urban street structure using space syntax. The syntactical results were correlated with several different aspects of each park collected and rated on a 1-5 scale. The results showed a wide range of availability of parks with no specific pattern related to whether the district is better off or poor. The data on green space per district was often heavily biased by the presence of large areas of forest park or non-recreational land which gives a false picture.Many of the best parks are poorly integrated into the street network and found in the better off districts yet are very popular because they are “destination” parks in cooler, hilly areas. Poorly integrated parks in the inner city districts tended to show lower levels of maintenance, were often little used and had vandalism. Much more attention is needed to provide green space in an equitable way.