Abstract
Urban park facilities and services offer a number of opportunities to fulfill individual, social, economic, and environmental benefits. Urban parks, provided through political measures as public goods, require balanced distribution in order to ensure social equity. The primary objectives of this study are to analyze the accessibility of urban parks and to examine whether urban parks are distributed equitably. GIS and statistical methods were used to investigate correlations between accessibility to neighborhood parks and socioeconomic status. As results, percentage of low-income population within the city was negatively related to park accessibility. Low-income dominated residential area, such as Sujeong-gu and Jungwon-gu have large low-income communities and less park accessibility compared with Bundang-gu, which are dominated by high-income residents. So, results from this study indicate that urban parks are not distributed equitably within Seongnam city. Therefore, creative strategies to provide urban parks for areas in need through the utilization of vacant lots, abandoned sites, and schools sites are necessary. Furthermore, budgetary priorities should be set to create new parks and revitalizing parks within the city's older neighborhoods are also needed.
webmaster
