1887

OECD Regional Development Papers

Papers from the Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities of the OECD cover a full range of topics including regional statistics and analysis, urban governance and economics, rural governance and economics, and multi-level governance. Depending on the programme of work, the papers can cover specific topics such as regional innovation and networks, sustainable development, the determinants of regional growth or fiscal consolidation at the subnational level.

English

Comparing access to urban parks across six OECD countries

This work leverages globally consistent data on parks from Google Maps, in combination with the computational power of Google Maps Directions API to quantify accessibility to parks across nearly 500 metropolitan areas in six countries: Estonia, France, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and the United States. We combined high resolution population data from Worldpop with parks data and navigation estimates to measure: (1) Fraction of the population with access to parks within a 10-minute walk; and (2) the median walking time to the closest park. We find large differences in access to parks between countries, as well as large variability across cities and their respective commuting zones. To demonstrate how this framework can support cross country comparisons and efforts to track progress towards SDG11, we assessed access to parks by income group in selected countries, finding that the median walking time to a park is shorter for residents of low income neighbourhoods both in French and American metropolitan areas.

English

Keywords: accessibility, metropolitan areas, cities, parks, amenities
JEL: R58: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / Regional Government Analysis / Regional Development Planning and Policy; R53: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / Regional Government Analysis / Public Facility Location Analysis; Public Investment and Capital Stock
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error