Spatial accessibility of country parks in Shanghai, China

- The accessibility of country parks in Shanghai's central city are lower than those of other urban areas.
- The spatial accessibility of country parks in Shanghai is far from ideal.
- Country parks cannot be replaced by urban parks in Shanghai because of their unique functionality and attraction to residents.
- Population distribution and traffic node planning could improve accessibility to country parks.

To deal with the challenges of nature conservation and public recreation in a rapidly urbanization, many big cities in China have launched country parks programs. However, seldom literature focus on the accessibilities of country parks as public infrastructure. By calculating the spatial accessibility indexes based on the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method, this paper evaluates the spatial accessibility of 14 country parks to 240 streets/towns in Shanghai. Our analysis indicates that the spatial differences of the accessibility of streets/towns are significant; the accessibility in Shanghai's central city and the Chongming Islands are lower than those of other urban areas. Based off our results, the spatial accessibility of streets/towns is far from ideal, with 85% of streets/towns having an index value less than 0.0025. Most of Shanghai's residents in streets/towns require a travel time of more than 60 min. The authors suggest that country parks cannot be replaced by urban parks in Shanghai because of their unique functionality and attraction to residents. To improve the spatial accessibility of country parks, the authors advocate for the improvement of population distribution in Shanghai and the integration of road networks and public transportation sites to country parks. Our results for Shanghai are applicable to other big cities that experienced similar rapid urbanization in China, East Asia, and Southeast Asia.