Environmental justice: accessibility of urban public green spaces in two European cities

• Autor(a) principal: Silva, Catarina de Sousa
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/12243
• topic: Acessibilidade; Infraestrutura verde; Espaços verdes públicos; Justiça ambiental; Eco-gentrificação; Habitações soviéticas; Tartu; Faro; Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Artes

Although it is unanimous that urban green infrastructure is essential to increase the population’s wellbeing, in many developed countries the availability of green spaces is limited or its distribution around the city is uneven. Also, the availability of public green spaces may be directly related with the geographical location of the city. In Europe, Northern and Central European countries tend to have higher amount of public green spaces compared with the Mediterranean countries. It is also recognized that the distribution of public green spaces is related to the location of social classes. This means that some minorities in society, such as the elderly or ethnic minorities, have less access or are deprived of access to green spaces compared to the rest of the population. In addition, the current planning for urban regeneration and renewal of degraded areas, including slums or ghettos redevelopment, creating new high quality recreational public green spaces, result sometimes in projects that enhance the paradox of green gentrification. Aim of this study is to present evidence about environmental justice in the distribution of the public green spaces in both Tartu, Estonia and Faro, Portugal. Quantitative indicators of public green spaces were calculated in each city districts. The accessibility of those spaces was measured using the “walkability” distance and grid methods. The results revealed that there were more availability and accessibility of public green spaces in Tartu than in Faro. Even so, in Tartu there were inequalities between the soviet-era housing block districts, where the majority of Russian inhabitants live, and the rest. Roma communities in Faro were located in districts without access to public green spaces. Availability of public green spaces was varying from 1.22 to 31.44m2/inhabitant in districts of Faro and 1.04 to 164.07m2/inhabitant in districts of Tartu. In both cities 45% of the inhabitants had accessible public green spaces within 500m from the residence, meanwhile after the development of the proposed new green infrastructure will be 68% for the city of Faro and 86% for Tartu.