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.
Available from April 11, 2023
In series:OECD Regional Development Papersview more titles