| Urban park greenspace is the main place for leisure and recreation,which is of great significance to meet the leisure and recreation needs of citizens and improve their well-being.In addition to the number of urban park green space,its spatial accessibility(i.e.,whether people can reach and enter urban parks conveniently within acceptable distance or time)is also an important indicator to evaluate whether people can easily enjoy the service.With the rapid socio-economic development and the improvement of people’s living standards,the spatial accessibility of urban park greenspace is received increasing attention from urban residents and decision-makers.The network analysis method is a widely used method to evaluate the spatial accessibility of urban park greenspace as it can realistically simulate the spatial process that people enter urban park greenspace through road from their home.Service radius is one of the most important parameters when applying the network analysis method to evaluate the spatial accessibility of urban park.Current studies set the service radius through two strategies.One is to set a uniform service radius for all parks,for example 15 minutes’ walking distance.The other is to set different service radius for different classes or types of urban park and park area is usually used to group urban parks as it is highly related to service radius.Both approaches failed to effectively consider the variance of service radius among different urban parks and may generate large uncertainty in the results.In this study we firstly collected data of urban park service radius and park area from literature and investigated the statistical relationship between them to build a statistical model to estimate service radius for urban park greenspace with any sizes.We then applied this statistical model to estimate the park service radius in Changsha city based on park area and to simulate urban park service area on foot using the Network Analyst module of Arc GIS.We calculated two indices of service area ratio(service area divided by total area)and service population ratio(population within the service area divided by total population)for the whole study area and different districts to measure the spatial accessibility of urban parks for leisure and recreation.Finally,we optimized the spatial distribution of urban park greenspace to increase its spatial accessibility.Our results showed that:(1)Urban park service radius showed a significant non-linear relationship with park size.The service radius increases with the increase of park size and the speed of the increase slow down when urban park gets bigger and bigger.(2)Urban parks in Changsha are not evenly distributed and their service area for leisure and recreation can only cover 32% of the study area and serve about half population with a walking travel mode.Yuelu district and Furong district have the highest park greenspace accessibility,followed by Tianxin district,Yuhua district and Kaifu district,while Changsha County and Wangcheng district have the lowest accessibility.(3)By adding 53 urban park greenspace with a total area of 796.1ha,the service area ratio can increase to 43.2%,and the service population ratio can increase to 67.5% in the study area.To improve the spatial accessibility of urban park greenspace in Changsha city we suggest:(1)Increasing park number and area,2)Optimizing the spatial distribution of park greenspace,(3)Improving connection of roads between residents and urban park greenspace,(4)increasing the openness or entrances of parks,and(5)Enhancing the attractiveness of urban park greenspace for leisure and recreation.The built statistical model to estimate service radius of urban park based on park area can be applied to other Chinese cities to evaluate the spatial accessibility of urban park for leisure and recreation.Findings of urban park spatial accessibility obtained in this study can help better urban park greenspace planning and management to improve its leisure and recreation service. |
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