Accessibility of public urban green space in an urban periphery: The case of Shanghai

We studied the accessibility of public urban green spaces in the context of rapid land transformation within the urban periphery. By using Shanghai, China as a case study, we illustrated how to evaluate the access to public green spaces of an urban periphery and how planning processes can influence the improvement of such access. We constructed a composite index named the “green accessibility index” (GAI), which measures how well residents are treated in terms of access to different types of public urban green spaces. Shanghai and its districts have improved their green accessibility index from 2000 to 2010. However, the GAI in the urban periphery fell behind the city average. Furthermore, while the inner suburbs, especially Pudong and Baoshan, had fared quite well in green accessibility improvement, outer suburbs made moderate progress in comparison to the city average. We identified hot/cold spots and spatial clustering that had a high/low green accessibility index in the urban periphery. The cold spots are in urgent need of substantial improvements to green space accessibility.