LOUD Publishes Research in the Journal Landscape and Urban Planning: Exploring Environmental Equity and Visitation Disparities in Peri-Urban Parks

LOUD published a paper titled ‘Exploring Environmental Equity and Visitation Disparities in Peri-Urban Parks: A Mobile Phone Data-Driven Analysis in Tokyo’ in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

Peri-urban parks play a crucial role in enhancing urban living conditions and promoting interactions between people and nature. Nevertheless, assessments of environmental equity and visitor behavior differences in peri-urban parks remain insufficient in existing research. To address this gap, the study utilizes mobile phone data from over 40,000 visitors to Tokyo’s peri-urban parks. By employing various methods such as Local Moran’s I, Lorenz curves, Gini coefficients, and K-means clustering, the study explores accessibility and visitation behavior differences among residents of the 23 special wards of Tokyo and various visitor groups. The results first reveal significant differences based on mobile device indicators, emphasizing the importance of human activity in assessing peri-urban park accessibility and highlighting the necessity of using multidimensional methods. Additionally, Gini coefficient analysis of both mobile phone data and the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) indicators shows that expanding the service radius beyond 10 km can effectively mitigate environmental inequalities. Furthermore, visitor groupings derived from mobile phone data better explain differences in visitation behavior compared to those based solely on age demographic subgroups. These findings provide new information and perspectives for urban park planning policy makers, aiding in the development of strategies to address accessibility inequalities and offering effective criteria for classifying peri-urban park visitors.

Fig. Study Area and Location of Peri-Urban Parks

Fig. Comparison of Mobile Data-Driven Indicators and Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) Indicators

Dr. Zhou Yichun, the author of the article, points out that peri-urban parks play a critical role in optimizing the spatial structure of metropolitan areas and enhancing urban ecosystem services, which is also a key research focus in urban science. He hopes that future research will delve deeper into the service functions of peri-urban parks and their interactions with resident behavior by integrating remote sensing, street view data, social media analysis, and mobile signaling. Professor ChengHe Guan remarks that the study of peri-urban parks is an essential component of the laboratory's project on "AI-Driven Blue-Green Infrastructure Planning and Design." This project is a practical exploration of digitalization in urban parks in Shanghai and serves as a theoretical foundation for "climate urban park studies" arising from global climate change. He hopes that more domestic and international scholars and experts will collaborate to design future urban blue-green infrastructure.

Paper Link:

Guan, C., Zhou, Y. (2024) Exploring environmental equity and visitation disparities in peri-urban parks: A mobile phone data-driven analysis in Tokyo. Landscape and Urban Planning, 248, 105104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2024.105104