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Ecological Indicators xxx (2013) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ecological Indicators
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind

Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable

planning in a dense urban context
Daniele La Rosa ∗
University of Catania – Department of Architecture, Viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The issue of accessibility to urban greenspaces is raising as one of the most debated in sustainable urban
Received 11 July 2013 planning, especially in topics such as environmental justice and health inequalities. This is mainly due
Received in revised form 7 October 2013 to the growing attention that is recognised today to health and well-being benefits from greenspaces.
Accepted 6 November 2013
Different people interpret accessibility based on their individual needs and priorities, but it is generally
acknowledged that access to greenspaces may be particularly beneficial for children, lower socioeconomic
Keywords:
groups and for people with other mental/psychological illness. However, if accessibility is the measure of
Accessibility
the ease of reaching valued destinations, clarifying its definition is an important pre-requisite for further
Greenspaces
Indicators
analysis aimed at supporting urban planning choices on greenspaces.
GIS The following paper presents a set of accessibility indicators aimed at quantifying different measures
Urban planning of accessibility to existing open spaces for the city of Catania, south Italy, an urban context characterised
by a general lack of greenspaces and high density of urban settlements.
Proposed indicators are divided into two main categories: simple distance indicators (SIs) and proxim-
ity indicators (PIs). The first accounts for the number of people or users that can have access to a particular
open space, while the second weights these people or users with the distance from their location to the
open spaces. Indicators are calculated using different thresholds of Euclidean and network distances.
Results show different scenarios in terms of rank of greenspaces accessibility, strongly influenced by
chosen distance metric (Euclidean vs network) and thus emphasise a careful use of these indicators as
planning support tools. Some practical implications of measuring accessibility for urban planning can be
highlighted: for instance, specific land uses might be chosen for highly accessible open spaces, especially
those characterised by a high proximity to residential settlements. Examples include allotment gardens,
playgrounds and other informal green areas.
© 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The issue of accessibility to GSs is becoming one of the most

The important role of green spaces (GSs) in urban contexts has
been widely acknowledged. The services provided by these areas
include the preservation of biodiversity in urban areas (Kowarik,
2011), sequestration of CO2 (Nowak et al., 2006), production of O2
(Jo, 2002), reduction of air pollution (Yang et al., 2005) and noise
(Fang and Ling, 2003), regulation of microclimates (Shin and Lee,
2005) and provision of cultural and recreational value (Thompson,
2002). Moreover, GSs play a fundamental role in health, well-being
and social safety (Sugiyama et al., 2008; Paquet et al., 2013).
In urban contexts, GSs include very different areas, such as parks,
gardens, urban forests, nature reserves, corridors along waterways,
playgrounds and other informal green areas (Dai, 2011; La Rosa and
Privitera, 2013).
∗ Tel.: +39 0957382523; fax: +39 095330339.
E-mail address: dlarosa@darc.unict.it
debated in sustainable urban planning, especially in topics such
as environmental justice and public health. This is mainly due to
the growing recognition today of the health and well-being bene-
fits from GSs (Ward Thompson, 2011). Different people interpret
accessibility based on their individual needs and priorities, but it is
generally agreed that facilitating access to GSs may be particularly
beneficial for children, people in lower socio-economic groups and
people with other mental/psychological illness. However, if acces-
sibility is a measure of the ease of reaching valued destinations,
clarifying its definition is an important pre-requisite for further
analysis aimed at supporting urban planning choices about GSs.
Accessibility is a broad and flexible concept than can be defined
according to the field of interest. The term is often misused and
confused with other terms such as mobility, which represents the
ability to move from one place to another. Accessibility rather
means the ability to approach something (El-Geneidy and Levinson,
2006). In social sciences and urban planning, accessibility is an
attribute of people (and goods) rather than only a transport mode

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011

Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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or service provision, and describes an integrated system of facil-
ities/services and users from the user viewpoint (Halden et al.,
2003). Moreover, in this study, the accessibility has an intrinsic
spatial feature that is related to the possibility for citizens to reach
a particular place and is different to other non-spatial character of
accessible places such as regime property. According to this feature,
accessibility can be modelled by GIS spatial indicators.
Approaches to the evaluation of accessibility can be differ-
ent according to the particular aims of the assessments, available
data, time and resources. Since there is often a trade-off between
the availability of appropriate datasets or software and the
aims/objectives of a particular project, different approaches have
been used to assess accessibility to GSs (Higgs et al., 2012).
For urban policies aimed at enhancing the overall accessibility to
GSs and related provided ecosystem services, it is important to find
appropriate tools and indicators able to support choices towards
the creation of new GSs. Particularly, the choice of which area to
be addressed as a GS should be based on the criterion (among oth-
ers) of the maximisation of its accessibility in order to allow the
highest number of people to have easier access to the GS in terms
of time or distance. Moreover, choices about where to locate new
GSs should aim to minimise social disparities of access, to avoid
low-income, minority or other social groups lacking access to the
benefits provided by GSs (Pham et al., 2012).
The following paper presents a set of accessibility GIS based indi-
cators aimed at quantifying different measures of accessibility to
open spaces (OSs) in the city of Catania, south Italy, an urban con-
text characterised by a general lack of GSs and high density of urban
settlements. Particularly, accessibility indicators are calculated to
rank existing OSs – currently not zoned or used as GSs – according
to their scores of accessibility, in order to understand which are
more suitable to be addressed for new GSs by the municipality’s
land-use plan.
The paper is structured in the following way. Approaches for
modelling the accessibility to GSs are discussed in Section 2. The
study area and used geo dataset are described in Section 3. The
proposed indicators are presented in Section 4. Results of indica-
tors’ calculation are given in Section 5 and than discussed in Section
6. Finally, conclusions are summarised in Section 7.
2. Modelling accessibility to urban greenspaces
Spatial approaches and GISs are widely used to examine the
pattern of accessible urban GSs. Some of the main research fields
cover the identification of areas suffering from lack of accessibility
(Barbosa et al., 2007), social inequities deriving from ethnic minori-
ties with limited access to GSs (Boone et al., 2009; Lindsey et al.,
2001; Pham et al., 2012; Talen and Anselin, 1998), and the rela-
tionship between availability of and accessibility to GSs and health
outcomes (Apparicio et al., 2008; Paquet et al., 2013).
In recent years, the modelling of accessibility to GSs has evolved
substantially, thanks to enhanced GIS features (particularly the
development of GIS network analysis modules, such as ArcGis Net-
work Analyst) and personal computers’ computational capabilities.
From simple radius-buffering methods aimed at evaluating the
number of facilities and the proportion of the population within a
fixed area (Nicholls and Shafer, 2001; Moseley et al., 2013), recent
research has developed to integrate urban landscape character-
istics or socio-economic data with more advanced methods for
distance evaluation (Pham et al., 2012; Sander et al., 2010).
There are two common approaches in current research streams
that are used for measuring accessibility to GSs or other urban
facilities with GIS (Apparicio et al., 2008; Higgs et al., 2012).
The first is to use indicators/measures which count the num-
ber of services (e.g. green areas, hospitals, other urban services)
Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
within a fixed distance (or time) from the origin points of users, or
vice versa. These indicators are simply based on a distance relation
between users and the service under examination, and are gen-
erally easy to calculate, without the need for further analyses or
data collecting. Examples are the number of services (i.e. in this
paper, GSs) within a fixed distance of residential areas, the number
of people located within a fixed distance, the minimum distance to
the closest services or the average distance from all services. This
approach ignores the real spatial distribution of the population that
can use a certain service and the relative distance of the population
to the service.
The second approach is to calculate ‘proximity’ measures based
on the evaluation of the number of users or members of the popu-
lation with reference to their specified distance/time from a certain
service (i.e. GS). In this way, accessibility to a particular service is
weighted with its effective distance from the users.
Both approaches require some geographic information in order
to calculate the indicators.
Three fundamental variables to be considered in the modelling
of accessibility indicators:
- an origin place (typically a point or area) representing the location
of the users/population that can potentially have access to the
service/GS;
- a destination place (typically a point or area), representing the
location of the service that the users/population can potentially
access;
- a distance measure between the aforementioned places.
The location of the users/population can be modelled using typ-
ical census geo-referenced data such as census tracts, which are
geographical units where users (residents or specific social groups)
are located. Census tracts also allow specific social groups (children,
elderly people, ethnic minorities) to be taken into account when
evaluating the accessibility to urban services (Barbosa et al., 2007;
Jansson and Persson, 2010; Wright Wendel et al., 2012). Thanks to
their periodic update, census data can also provide a chronological
evolution of the socio-economic system. They are usually proxied
by the centroid of each polygonal tract which represents the entire
population living there. To obtain a more precise distribution of the
population, additional ancillary data, such as land-use maps con-
taining information about residential areas, can be used (Apparicio
et al., 2008; La Rosa and Privitera, 2013). In this way, it is possible to
evaluate the number of people living inside each residential area as
a percentage of the number of people living inside the entire census
tract.
The location of the destination place (i.e. in this paper, a GS)
depends on the geographical primitives (point or polygons) that
are used. Geometric centroids of the polygons representing the GSs
are often used, as well as their entrances or access points. The dis-
tance between origin and destination will be different depending
on the chosen destination place; many studies have investigated
the influence on obtained results of this choice with different out-
comes (Nicholls and Shafer, 2001; Comber et al., 2008; Higgs et al.,
2012), even though it might often be very difficult to have or to
create detailed geographic data such as about access points to GSs
(e.g. by manual digitalisation).
Three types of distance are typically used for calculating
accessibility measures (Apparicio et al., 2008): Euclidean distance
(straight line), Manhattan distance (distance along the two sides of
a right-angled triangle opposed to the hypotenuse) and network
distance (shortest time or distance). Euclidean and Manhattan
distances can easily be calculated with every GIS. Network distance
is usually more precise but requires an additional geographical
dataset (a roads network layer) that might be not be available or
that might need additional work in order to be created. In previous
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Fig. 1. The study area of Catania (Italy) and the distribution of open spaces within the municipality.
work, different types of distance have shown some correlation
when applied to urban contexts: for instance, Apparicio et al.
(2008) found a strong correlation between Euclidean or Manhat-
tan distances and network distances across the metropolitan area
of Montreal (even if with some local differences in suburban areas).
One important issue that is usually less remarked in accessibility
modelling is that measures and indicators can be attributed both to
the origin place (i.e. in this paper, census tracts) or destination place
(i.e. GSs). In the first case, indicators will describe a characteristic
of the urban environment (the presence of GSs) and then attribute
this characteristic to the place where people or users are located
(census tracts). Indicators such as the number/area of GSs within
a fixed distance from census tracts or the minimum distance from
GSs are example of this case. In the second case, indicators will
quantify a characteristic of the potential users in an urban context
and then attribute it to a GS. The number of people living within
a fixed distance from a GS is a typical example of this case. The
choice of one of the two approaches depends on the needs of the
analysis: if the aim is to understand the geographical distribution
or supply of urban GSs, the first approach would be preferable; if
the analysis aims at understanding the potential demand of GSs for
planning, the second approach might be preferred. In the rest of this
paper, all indicators refer to GSs, because the aim of the research
is to characterise GSs in terms of accessibility and highlight the
implications for urban planning of using one indicator over another.
3. Study area and available geo datasets
In this work, the study area is Catania, one of the main cities
in southern Italy (Fig. 1), with an administrative area of 180 km2
and a population of 293,458. The city is in the centre of a
large conurbation that represents the largest metropolitan area
in Sicily, a settlement system characterised by extensive urban
sprawl (La Rosa and Privitera, 2013). Catania is characterised by
a relevant shortage of public spaces and services, especially GSs.
Currently the amount of public GSs is about 3 m2 /inhabitant, much
less than the minimum amount specified by national legislation
(9 m2 /inhabitant) (Privitera et al., 2013).
Apart from existing GSs, a significant number of other OSs,
currently unmanaged, are present in the city. These areas are
quite heterogeneous in shape, size, land-use, function, bio-physical
features, and ecological and landscape value, but represent an
Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
3
important and unused source of urban biodiversity and ecosystem
services (La Rosa and Privitera, 2013). These OSs will be the geo-
graphical units for calculating the indicators in the next sections.
In the current study, the following geo dataset was used. The
city’s street network, available as a shapefile, was converted into
a network in order to calculate the network distances (see Section
4).
The census tracts from the 2001 national census were available
as a polygonal shapefile.
The layer of OSs obtained by Urban Atlas land-use layer (EEA,
2010) for the city of Catania had an average scale of detail of
1:12,000. The source of the land-use classification was a SPOT 5
image (resolution 2.5 m) acquired in the summer of 2005. OSs
included the following land-use categories of the Urban Atlas:
agricultural, semi-natural and wetland areas; forest; land without
current use. To update and check the Urban Atlas land-use layer, a
visual inspection of high-resolution regional orthophotos (Regione
Sicilia, 2009) and recent Google Maps images was performed. The
land-use layer was spatially adjusted in order to match the Italian
national geo-referencing system of the street network and census
tracts. In all, 150 control points were used.
The street network, census tracts and OS layers are shown in
Fig. 2.
4. Methods and proposed indicators
Different indicators are proposed to investigate the role of dis-
tance and the way accessibility to OSs can be modelled. Indicators
are divided in two classes, with reference to the two different
approaches introduced in Section 2: simple distance indicators (SIs)
and proximity indicators (PIs). SIs measure the number of people
at fixed distances from each OS that can have access to each OS. PIs
quantify the number of people at fixed distances from each GS and
weight them with their distance from GSs (gravitational model).
Geometric centroids of GSs and census tracts will be used as origin
and destination places, respectively.
Indicators are calculated based on two types of distance:
- Euclidean distance (E).
- Road network distance (N). This is based on Dijkstra’s algorithm
(Zhan and Noon, 1998), which solves single-source shortest path
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Fig. 2. Available data for indicators’ calculation: layers of streets network, census tracts and open space.

Table 1 of the network analysis returned a .dbf table containing more than
Proposed indicators of accessibility to greenspaces, type of distance and distance’s
250,000 records, approximately the same number returned by the
thresholds.
calculation of Euclidean distance.
Euclidean distance Network distance

Simple indicators (SI) 4.2. Simple distance indicators (SI)

Fixed threshold distance: 300 m SI E 300 SI N 300
Fixed threshold distance: 600 m SI E 600 SI N 600
SIs were calculated identifying in the distance table all cen-
Proximity indicators (PI) sus tracts’ centroids that were within the two considered distance
Fixed threshold distance: 300 m PI E 300 PI N 300
Fixed threshold distance: 600 m PI E 600 PI N 600
thresholds (300 m and 600 m). Summarising GIS functions in the
No-fixed threshold distance PI E Tot PI N Tot distance table allowed the total population present within the
considered distance thresholds to be calculated for each OS. The
resulting table was then joined back to the GS layer, in order to
problems for a graph that has non-negative edge path costs, pro- map the indicators’ scores.
ducing a shortest path tree.
4.3. Proximity indicators (PI)
Three distance thresholds were used: 300 m, 600 m and no fixed
threshold. These distances were chosen to test the spatial config- Modelling PIs involves the definition of variables that Yao and
urations of OSs that were obtained by using different indicators. Thill (2005) separate into distance and context variables. Distance
No fixed distance from OS assumes the hypothesis that people can variables include the way that distance is measured (distance met-
have access to all existing GSs within the municipality. rics), and context variables account for contextual factors such
The combination between indicators, types of distance and dis- types of activities, reachability of services and familiarity with the
tance thresholds produces 10 possible configurations, summarised areas. Two kinds of elements have been identified:
in Table 1.

- Reference and primary objects (Frank, 1992). In this paper, refer-

4.1. Distances calculation
ence objects are the OSs that we want to characterise, and primary
objects are the centroids of census tracts where people who can
All polygonal census tracts and GSs were preliminarily con-
access the primary objects are present.
verted into centroids (point features), taking care to conserve an
- The type of activity or use existing in the primary and reference
attribute for their unique identification. Euclidean distance tables
objects. These are defined as residential uses (census tracts) and
were calculated in the GIS between census tracts and GS centroids.
OSs for the primary and reference objects, respectively.
The distance table calculated for the entire study area recorded
- An indicator of the proximity of the primary objects to the ref-
more than 250,000 records, because 115 OSs and 2156 census tracts
erence objects. This describes the geographical relationship and
are present in the area.
distance between the activities in the primary and reference
For the network distance calculation, a network layer was first
objects.
created with ArcGIS Network Analyst from the available road
shapefile. This layer represents the base for the network distance
The proximity is here modelled using a gravity potential expres-
analysis, which computes the distance between origin (centroids
sion (Talen and Anselin, 1998; Apparicio et al., 2008; La Rosa and
of OSs) and destination points (centroids of census tracts) along a
Privitera, 2013) in which the number of services is weighted by their
road network. No barriers were assumed to movement along the
distance from a particular location and adjusted for the ‘friction of
roads. The impedance values were set as the lengths of each arc of
distance’. The following formula is used:
the road network. In order to perform the network analysis and cal-
culate the distance, all origins and destinations have to be located 
n
POPj
on the network layer. This condition is actually never respected, PROXi = (1)
but ArcGIS Network Analyst allows all points that are used in the DISTji2
j=1
analysis to snap to the nearest orthogonal position on the net-
work. This can be done both automatically and manually. The run where

Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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Fig. 3. Example of proximity modelling: in the configuration A the OS in green has a higher proximity to the 3 census tracts in red than in configuration B. (For interpretation
of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
Source: La Rosa and Privitera, 2013
- PROXi is the proximity of OS i in the study area;
- POPj is the population of the census tract j;
- DISTji is the distance between the centroids of the census tract j
and the OS i.
This expression accounts for the total number of people who
can access each OS and weights this number with the inverse of
the squared distance of each census tract from each OS.
Different distance thresholds were tested: 300 m, 600 m and the
entire municipality (no fixed threshold configuration, Table 1). In
the latter case, it is hypothesised that all the people living inside the
urban fabric have access to every OS. People may choose to cover
longer distances to reach a certain place if this provides a particu-
lar service or features. Jansson and Persson (2010) and Schipperijn
et al. (2010) have shown that distance might not be a limiting fac-
tors in the use of GSs (playgrounds in particular) if these present
more attractive features, such as better equipment, or if people can
find there some of their friends. This is also the case in urban con-
texts characterised by lack of GSs. There are also situations in which
particular social groups (e.g. families with small children) might be
willing to cover longer distances expressly to find appropriate OSs
in which to spend their free time.
Due to the inverse relationship between proximity and distance,
OSs that are closer to census tracts are characterised by a higher
proximity than those that are far away. An example of the model
behaviour is reported in Fig. 3, which shows one OS (in green) and
three census tracts (in red). When the dimension of census tracts
is equal, in this case proxied by the population size, the OS has a
higher proximity to census tracts in the configuration A (Fig. 3, left)
than in configuration B (Fig. 3, right), because the overall distance
of census tracts is lower in configuration A.
Operationally, PIs are calculated using different GIS functions.
After having calculated a distance table (both for Euclidean and net-
work distances) it is possible to use several GIS Summarise functions
to derive another table that reports a score of proximity for each
OS following formula (1). This table is then joined back to the GS
layer in order to map the PIs scores.
5. Results
Fig. 4 reports the maps for the SIs, while Fig. 5 shows maps for
PIs.
The first evident difference in the indicators’ scores is the perfor-
mance obtained by changing the type of distance. At fixed distances
(both 300 m and 600 m), Euclidean distance returns a higher num-
ber of OSs having census tracts within the distance threshold than
network distance does; this is obviously due to the fact that net-
work distances are usually longer than Euclidean ones (it takes
longer to walk/drive along the road network). The results in terms
of number of accessible OSs depend only on the distance thresh-
olds and how the distances are calculated, but not on the type of
Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
5
Table 2
Number of accessible GSs for each indicators.
Distance # accessible GS (total GS = 117)
300 m/Euclidean 114
300 m/network 91
600 m/Euclidean 117
600 m/network 113
No distance threshold 117
Euclidean/network
indicator: SI and PI return the same number of OSs when fixed a
particular distance threshold and type of distance (Table 2).
As a consequence of the more restricted number of census
tracts that are reachable when considering the network distance,
SI presents lower scores when calculated with network distance
than with Euclidean distance. For SI, the most accessible OSs can
be reached by more than 3500 people (Euclidean) and 2000 people
(network) for the 300 m distance threshold. This score increases
to 17,800 people (Euclidean) and 8500 (network) when fixing the
threshold at 600 m. On the contrary, PI scores are always higher
when using network distance, because lower distance values at the
denominator increase the indicators’ scores (see Section 4, formula
(1)).
Indicators’ scores are reported in Annex I for all configurations
considered.
Overall, highly accessible OSs are the ones that are more central
with respect to the census tract’s location. These OSs are located
in the most central area of the municipality, close to the histori-
cal centre and highly populated urban areas. These geographical
features allow these areas to get the best indicator scores.
Figs. 6 and 7 map OSs that belong to the 5th quintile of the
indicators’ scores (for Euclidean and network distances), consid-
ering together Euclidean and network distances, for SIs and PIs,
respectively.
In order to understand how the geographical configuration of
more accessible OSs change when using different indicators and
distances, Figs. 6 and 7 map the OSs that belong to the 5th quin-
tile of the indicators’ scores. These maps show those OSs are the
more stable in terms of types of distance used, as they present the
highest scores at the same time when using Euclidean and network
distances.
For SI, considering the 300 m distance, 10 OSs are present in the
5th quintile, while there are 19 OSs included in the 5th quintile
when using the 600 m distance. Considering all the four distance
configurations at the same time (300 m Euclidean, 300 m network,
600 m Euclidean, 600 m network), 7 OSs belong to the 5th quintile.
For PI, 8 OSs are within 300 m and 600 m, 9 for the no-threshold
configuration. Finally, 7 OSs are present in all six configurations of
the PI (300 m Euclidean, 300 m network, 600 m Euclidean, 600 m
network, no distance threshold Euclidean, no distance threshold
network). These results demonstrate an overall greater variation of
the ranks of OSs when using PIs.
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Fig. 4. Maps of simple indicators’ (SI) scores. The indicator expresses the number of people within the different distance thresholds. Classes are made with a quintile
classification method.

Table 3 Table 4
Spearman’s rank correlations for simple indicators (SI). P values < 0.001. Spearman’s rank correlations for proximity indicators (PI). P values < 0.001.

Correlations  Correlations 

SI E 300 0.603 PI E 300 0.400

SI N 300 PI N 300
SI E 300 0.769 PI E 300 0.970
SI E 600 PI E 600
SI E 300 0.638 PI E 300 0.895
SI N 600 PI E Tot
SI N 300 0.490 PI N 300 0.971
SI E 600 PI N 600
SI N 300 0.543 PI N 300 0.892
SI N 600 PI N Tot
SI E 600 0.772 PI E 600 0.576
SI N 600 PI N 600
PI N 600 0.936
PI N Tot
PI E Tot 0.674
PI N Tot
OSs belonging to the 5th quintile are the less dependent to
changes in type of distance and thresholds, and might thus be con-
sidered as prior for creation of new GSs.
To explore the correlation among indicators, Spearman’s rank
correlation was calculated. According to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov indicators calculated with Euclidean and network distance. Also,
normality test, none of indicators under consideration was nor-  values tend to increase with the distance threshold.
mally distributed. Thus a Spearman’s rank order correlation was Analogous results in terms of correlation were found for PIs
performed (Apparicio et al., 2008; Higgs et al., 2012). Three groups (Table 4). Lower correlation was present between indicators calcu-
of correlations were analysed: correlations among SIs, PIs and both lated with Euclidean and network distance; for instance, the lowest
SIs and PIs. Overall, indicators were significantly correlated in all score was between PI E 300 and PI N 300 ( = 0.400, p < 0.001). This
explored configurations. result could be interpreted as a more different spatial configuration
High correlations were found among all SIs (Table 3), with the of accessibility obtained using Euclidean and network distance. On
lowest score for the correlation between SI N 300 and SI N 600 another hand, very high correlations were found when considering
indicators ( = 0.543, p < 0.001), and highest score found between PIs calculated with the same distance type (i.e.  = 0.970, p < 0.001
SI E 600 and SI N 600 ( = 0.772, p < 0.001). This last value shows for PI E 300 and PI E 600 or PI N 300 and PI N 600). It can also be
that significant correlations were also found when comparing seen that  values tend to increase when distance thresholds go

Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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Fig. 5. Maps of proximity indicators’ (PI) scores. The indicator expresses the number of people within the different distance thresholds weighted for the squared distance to
open spaces. Classes are made with a quintile classification method.

from 300 m to 600 m, but then slightly decrease when considering
the entire municipality without fixing a threshold.
Slightly lower correlations were found when comparing SIs
with PIs (Table 5). At the same distance threshold (300 m or
Table 5
Spearman’s rank correlations for simple and proximity indicators (SI and PI). P val-
ues < 0.001.
600 m), lower  values were found when correlating SI N and PI N
( = 0.585 for SI N 300 and PI N 300;  = 0.648 for SI N 600 and
PI N 600). The lower correlation between SI and PI might show how
the inclusion of sociological variables (i.e. the census tract’s popu-
lation) has an influence on the accessibility rank – and consequent
spatial location – of OSs.
6. Discussion

Correlations 
6.1. Indicators’ choice and methodological issues
SI E 300 0.765
PI E 300 The primary issue to be discussed is how to choose the most
SI E 600 0.783
PI E 600
suitable indicators to describe the accessibility of people to GSs.
SI N 300 0.585 This might depend on several factors, such as the aim of the research
PI N 300 or application, the number and types of available geo datasets, and
SI N 600 0.648 the methodological assumptions/choices (type of distance, use of
PI N 600
centroids or census tracts) that are made.

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urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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Fig. 6. Maps of more accessible open spaces (5th quintile) calculated by simple indicators.

Fig. 7. Maps of more accessible open spaces (5th quintile) calculated by proximity indicators.

Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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The service or typology of GS involved in the accessibility eval-
uation should be considered. If a study aims to understand which
OSs can be used for particular GSs such as playgrounds, a simple
distance indicator may be most appropriate, because playground
areas tend to be highly localised in the urban fabric (Talen and
Anselin, 1998). On the other hand, it is also true that SIs (e.g. the
number of people at a fixed distance from the GS) are not able to
take into account people who live outside the fixed distance but
who may be willing to travel or drive to reach a particular service
(La Rosa and Privitera, 2013). For this reason, proximity indicators
calculated with the gravity model might be more able to capture all
the information about potential users inside a larger urban context
(conurbations of towns and suburbs belonging to several munici-
palities or a metropolitan area). Thus, if the aim of the evaluation
is to understand which of the existing OSs might be more suitable
to be a GS (as in this research), PIs might allow a more complete
picture of accessibility to OSs in the entire urban context, as they
are able to take into account the spatial configuration of all existing
OSs, considering the entire network of OS (Koohsari et al., 2013;
Moseley et al., 2013) for their calculation.
The choice of the exponent for the distance in the gravita-
tional model formula (1) should be based on the study of users’
travel behaviour. The square distance might be suitable for con-
sidering a walking travel mode, the transport mode more used
by people having access to GS. If users look for high quality ser-
vices (i.e. urban parks with particular features or playgrounds
with very new or well maintained equipments), they might accept
travelling longer distance to access the service of the sought-
for quality. In this case, the exponent of the gravitational model
formula can be fixed at 1. On the other hand, less-than-ideal ser-
vices might be accepted if services of the desired quality are not
available within an acceptable threshold of travelling distance. In
this other case, the exponent of the formula can be increased to
2.
6.2. Limitation on the use of SI
The results obtained from SIs confirm the findings and limita-
tions on the use of buffer distances to estimate the accessibility to
GSs. The use of SIs may lead to under-provision of functional GSs
and their benefits, because these indicators are not able to evaluate
the different users of GSs and thus highlight spatial inequalities in
accessibility (Moseley et al., 2013).
The available geographical dataset strongly influences the
choice of indicators to use. As already discussed, indicators based
on network distance require a road network. Even if today there
are several open source road datasets at different scales and reso-
lutions, such information is not always available and it can be costly
to build for the purpose. The same constraints can be extended to
the use of other additional information that might increase the pre-
cision of results, such as about access points to OSs. Moreover, if it
is necessary to plan for OSs to become future GSs, the location of
entrances cannot be known at the time of the research (as in the
case in this research).
6.3. The way distance is calculated
Euclidean distances are easy to calculate with all available
GIS software and have historically been used in many applica-
tions (Sander et al., 2010). They do not need a network layer of
streets and also require shorter computing times when calculat-
ing the distance matrix between centroids of census tracts and
centroids of OSs. Also, some additional work is usually needed
when setting the network parameters, like the manual snapping
of points to the available network. On the other hand, Euclidean
distances usually fail to represent adequately the actual distances
Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
9
walked or driven by users between an origin (i.e. in this study,
a census tract) and a destination (i.e. an OS). Network distances
are more precise and closer to real distances. Since they are
calculated between centroids, they do not represent the real dis-
tances that an user has to walk/drive to get inside the OS, but
rather they are proxies. However, network distances have the
ability to minimise this centroid effect because, when generat-
ing the network in the GIS, OS centroids are moved to the closest
element of the street network before the distance matrix is calcu-
lated.
Considering the same distance thresholds, the results obtained
for the indicators show how network distance is always more
restrictive in terms of numbers of reachable OSs at that dis-
tance. Euclidian values were almost double when passing from
300 m to 600 m threshold and this is obviously related to the
longer distances that it is necessary to walk/drive to reach the
GSs along the road network. This result is relevant and highlights
as urban analyses conducted for different aims (implementation
of policies/investments or market evaluation of real estate) might
require the indicators to be calculated using different distance
thresholds.
6.4. Limitation on the use of census tracts
Indicators were calculated inside the municipal area of Cata-
nia, because no spatial data about OSs was available outside the
area; for this reason, there may be a ‘border effect’ in the indica-
tors’ scores. Lower scores for OSs near borders (especially in the
north-west part of the municipality) might also be due to the fact
that there are no census tracts outside the municipalities. This con-
firms the findings by Apparicio et al. (2008) that also showed some
local variations in the correlation between Euclidean and network
distances, especially in suburban areas where Euclidean distances
are less precise. These results highlight the importance of also hav-
ing data about the population outside the area of interest in order
to get a more realistic picture of accessibility to GSs also by people
living outside the city administrative borders but close to OSs. This
need appears as even more relevant in contemporary metropolitan
areas, where conurbations are continuous and may include several
municipalities.
The use of centroids as proxies for the census tracts can be also
lead to an underestimation of the number of accessible OSs. This
occurs for larger OSs when using a fixed distance Euclidean thresh-
old (especially for a low threshold like 300 m), because the buffer
from centroids has to exceed the real size of OSs. This problem does
not occur for network distance, because the centroids of the OSs are
always snapped to the closest element of the network (see Section
4).
6.5. Implications for urban planning
Beside the considerations discussed above, the results of this
study show a considerable correlation among indicators. Par-
ticularly, a high correlation among indicators calculated with
Euclidean and network distances has been found, as also reported
by Apparicio et al. (2008). The correlation was higher for pairs
of indicators calculated with the same distance type (higher than
0.7,  < 0.001) than for indicators with different distance type.
Moreover, results from correlation analysis showed that corre-
lation varied when increasing distance thresholds but exhibited
a maximum for distance threshold of 600 m. In any case, the
overall high correlation between indicators might prompt a care-
ful consideration of the increasing operational times and costs
related to use a network layer, especially whether this is not avail-
able.
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However, land-use choices about which OS can be planned as
new GSs might be more interested in understanding spatial con-
figurations of most accessible OS than which distance threshold is
more suitable to be used. In other words, it might be more relevant
to localise where are the most accessible OSs (in relative terms) in
a city than to quantify how many people can have access to a single
OS (as the number of people will change with the used the distance
threshold).
This type of understanding is important because, as stated previ-
ously, some land uses may require a higher proximity than others;
areas with a higher proximity are likely to be reached more easily
than areas with a lower proximity. Specific types of GS might be
chosen for high-accessibility areas, especially those characterised
by a high proximity to residential settlements. Examples include
allotment gardens, playgrounds and other informal green areas
(DTLR, 2002). Allotment gardens or playgrounds are typical urban
land uses which constitute small patches but with good proxim-
ity to residential areas. For the activities in these areas, people
usually need be within short times and distances. For example,
children or older people need to walk short distances to get to
playgrounds or allotment gardens. One explanation underlying the
attractiveness of a land-use is the utility associated with the activ-
ity to be conducted at the destination (Gahegan, 1995). This is
particularly relevant in urban settlements characterised by high
population density, the presence of multi-storey apartments and a
lack of public and private gardens.
For particular OSs that present lower accessibility indicator
scores, other land uses can be proposed, including new forms of
urban agriculture (Wells and Gradwell, 2001; Zasada, 2011) or
urban greenery (Young, 2010). The final choice should depend also
on other specific characteristics such as size and the presence of
trees covering the land (La Rosa and Privitera, 2013).
6.6. Further research on the inclusion of different social group
Further research might include the refinement of indicators so
as to include particular social groups (e.g. children and elderly
people) or different ethnic groups (Comber et al., 2008) and the
interaction between urban environment and socio-ecological sys-
tems (Cook et al., 2012; Giles-Corti, 2006). This implies the need
of socio-economic data to further characterise – e.g. using them as
weights for indicators – the particular type of new GS: those OSs
with higher scores of indicators calculated using particular census
variable (i.e. families with young children) can be prior for new
playgrounds.
Accessibility indicators might also be further developed in
order to specify which particular types of GS can be proposed by
urban planning. Schipperijn et al. (2010) focused on the relation
between different types of GSs and users’ behaviours. These authors
Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
concluded that different combinations of GS characteristics are
likely to influence each behaviour, because the likelihood that a per-
son uses different types of GS depends on the individual behaviours.
As a consequence of this, there is a need to integrate quantita-
tive and qualitative aspects in the complex decision making that
is usually invested in urban planning processes, in order to better
understand which factors influence the daily use of GSs (Jansson
and Persson, 2010; McCormack et al., 2010).
7. Conclusions
Urban GSs are considered by recent researchers to have positive
implications for health, ecosystem service provision and cultural
enrichment. Understanding which existing OSs can be addressed
by urban planning towards new GSs needs support tools able to
quantify their degree of accessibility within urban areas.
The present work proposes and discusses a set of indicators
that can be used in urban planning, highlighting the pros, cons
and limitations of their use. Proposed indicators are divided into
two main categories: simple distance indicators (SIs) and prox-
imity indicators (PIs). The first account for the number of people
or users that can have access to a particular OS, while the second
weight these people or users with the distance from their location
to the OSs. Indicators are calculated using Euclidean and network
distance. The results show that more precise and accurate results
are obtained when using network distance, although this type of
distance requires more data and analysis (e.g. a network layer);
results obtained by using Euclidean distance tend to overestimate
the amounts of persons that can reach the single OS. A high corre-
lation in indicator scores might suggest in some circumstances the
use of indicators that require less data (e.g. indicators calculated
with Euclidean distance). The presence of a border effect in indica-
tors’ scores also suggests that more appropriate results from PIs are
obtained in highly urbanised areas or metropolitan areas. For this
reason, the spatial extent of the dataset should not be limited to the
area under examination but should include also census tracts that
are outside the city’s administrative boundaries and that represent
the places of origin of people who can potentially have access to
OSs.
Different OSs can be identified as being the more accessible
depending on the indicators used and, overall, the variation in
indicators’ scores should be carefully considered by researchers
and planners in terms of the methodologies used, assumptions
accepted, and limitations. In any case, indicators for evaluating the
accessibility of GSs represent very useful tools for urban planning
and might be able to provide municipalities or other metropolitan
public bodies (provinces, metropolitan areas) a sound base from
which to develop differentiated policies for a more liveable-in and
healthy urban environment.
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Annex I. Scores for all proposed indicators

ID OS SI E 300 SI N 300 SI E 600 SI N 600 PI E 300 PI N 300 PI E 600 PI N 600 PI E TOT PI N TOT

0 1955 301 5280 1282 54,519 32,846 77,516 37,227 130,824 63,189
1 1316 1316 5599 1818 74,847 363,291 96,862 365,467 148,708 394,298
2 1868 705 6789 1409 80,811 63,153 109,455 67,971 163,791 90,778
3 1057 2 5780 2287 25,019 42 51,975 10,749 99,542 41,005
4 397 388 1945 784 12,257 13,116 22,465 14,725 67,370 37,499
5 475 378 2011 475 40,970 21,243 48,401 21,718 75,671 33,756
6 137 67 3658 222 4487 6845 20,488 7685 50,874 27,762
7 475 182 1470 475 22,392 174,179 27,253 176,393 56,353 188,386
8 2736 1248 7455 2536 109,956 83,267 130,078 91,247 188,769 125,311
9 1721 365 6811 968 45,080 11,832 68,226 14,881 153,067 64,443
10 3123 1592 10,669 5454 177,677 33,938 219,393 51,598 270,533 86,015
11 1159 750 7833 2350 130,356 3,376,889 164,815 3,388,045 239,539 3,433,005
12 3135 285 4744 661 73,974 10,925 83,639 12,947 125,209 37,081
13 183 183 1728 899 319,864 2910 327,681 6241 349,891 23,408
14 1045 530 5093 2149 60,795 31,429 81,225 37,220 157,457 87,872
15 2 – 292 – 28 – 2673 – 45,369 22,212
16 59 – 512 – 767 – 2698 – 37,321 16,944
17 1143 – 5319 705 15,518 – 35,697 2644 81,867 20,703
18 773 237 3490 644 21,689 21,962 34,894 23,647 98,938 61,193
19 2094 80 8345 2454 12,1996 1301 150,656 12,206 218,220 58,067
20 1234 299 6671 1022 52,132 4687 79,906 8296 168,424 48,634
21 1981 – 5471 705 49,862 – 66,762 2461 119,134 30,783
22 1730 999 4296 1341 91,441 176,199 102,880 178,229 133,406 199,823
23 122 4 2579 95 3224 292 12,347 1066 44,294 17,661
24 1542 105 4118 932 70,406 1199 81,659 5683 111,732 24,423
25 613 – 3770 1204 79,503 – 96,135 5804 169,973 46,820
26 1230 202 3768 1624 95,805 114,477 107,590 121,229 139,499 143,833
27 1981 965 5701 1575 86,344 193,314 104,303 197,116 158,159 228,048
28 1664 310 7492 2416 121,228 5228 151,095 16,191 198,032 49,420
29 464 237 3472 864 18,771 65,882 35,543 68,129 104,149 108,320
30 2321 915 8657 2459 268,547 10,282 297,528 19,047 386,927 74,501
31 2396 781 16,540 4530 87,797 64,249 161,645 82,370 260,482 148,588
32 341 226 2125 692 7463 11,927 16,143 13,727 52,463 38,651
33 1389 214 6348 2324 152,851 1,678,873 177,000 1,689,724 257,614 1,735,560
34 522 237 2819 244 37,503 10,613 46,733 10,639 116,380 44,883
35 390 26 4001 468 7168 416 23,941 2683 69,253 34,322
36 471 165 9713 3595 219,649 215,544 265,503 230,437 360,380 288,269
37 1766 119 5472 1536 79,776 42,782 99,397 49,491 154,718 77,391
38 1062 166 7013 1069 31,153 10,250 61,719 15,375 136,610 64,294
39 279 212 2370 1458 5352 3783 16,746 9555 51,533 31,719
40 3094 1023 17,816 8213 93,920 16,527 167,054 48,475 264,365 117,821
41 450 – 4290 1134 19,873 – 41,295 6913 71,066 27,572
42 2870 755 15,556 6872 69,491 14,509 131,452 43,366 221,163 100,129
43 3645 2008 17,396 8416 129,297 49,202 202,613 81,560 301,875 155,474
44 1540 620 6185 2194 37,263 15,048 62,737 20,789 89,931 39,362
45 574 71 2265 508 20,450 36,327 28,725 38,261 51,746 56,373
46 1474 722 3661 1084 77,467 28,061 88,412 30,093 112,381 45,684
47 419 – 8597 1994 7904 – 49,169 9368 127,484 45,522
48 172 – 1903 946 1925 – 11,413 6638 46,617 22,485
49 7 – 2727 388 327 – 17,019 2258 61,322 21,265
50 719 282 4475 1134 15,424 4170 32,375 7437 113,464 55,530
51 695 2818 273 26,713 – 37,358 1077 98,342 30,332
52 569 293 4069 1585 7421 8232 27,323 13,667 67,710 41,865
53 63 – 378 321 1250 – 2733 1729 28,658 16,011
54 1428 1254 6355 2464 53,337 31,247,034 79,382 31,251,845 166,759 31,305,418
55 1056 695 2964 1211 52,663 22,159 61,295 25,127 95,157 43,850
56 1068 466 3227 1118 44,516 18,426 55,125 21,438 112,854 45,194
57 761 484 4350 1745 37,496 14,058 57,547 18,932 131,063 63,499
58 809 62 2715 532 56,004 58,668 65,767 60,379 103,968 80,670
59 1119 310 5006 1462 6,364,585 780,477,850 6,385,271 780,485,383 6,461,686 780,519,374
60 2657 102 5845 1218 62,019 1396 76,209 8888 127,589 29,537
61 2079 1126 8050 4065 53,414 250,469 87,445 266,437 141,430 302,405
62 1145 421 4314 1118 99,511 364,822 113,904 370,387 166,377 394,670
63 18 18 75 22 6206 0 6477 38 39,841 12,162
64 442 277 2672 880 10,186 3635 21,676 5632 75,016 36,278
65 276 59 4596 1217 10,214 846 31,327 6497 80,922 35,181
66 987 440 8214 4108 23,392 126,896 60,827 144,437 152,879 201,683
67 388 – 2861 388 4496 – 13,968 4287 55,047 25,411
68 18 – 22 – 454 – 471 – 31,075 –
69 120 202 2362 1397 30,033 25,360 40,216 29,633 74,244 49,720
70 2846 1166 12,170 4094 93,766 133,586 139,035 147,687 238,987 211,924
71 604 384 4978 1503 40,775 121,689 61,263 127,310 132,068 176,250
72 1697 494 7203 2221 75,224 15,776 104,968 25,230 192,171 70,885
73 3548 651 11,169 3336 113,639 17,618 154,722 30,379 240,585 80,683

Please cite this article in press as: La Rosa, D., Accessibility to greenspaces: GIS based indicators for sustainable planning in a dense
urban context. Ecol. Indicat. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.11.011
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Annex I (Continued )
ID OS SI E 300 SI N 300 SI E 600 SI N 600 PI E 300 PI N 300 PI E 600 PI N 600 PI E TOT PI N TOT

74 2277 229 8722 1924 125,998 55,013 158,239 63,641 179,232 82,922
75 981 – 3247 202 41,000 – 53,917 1457 92,955 26,367
76 727 216 2705 852 13,322 13,220 22,370 18,054 59,474 40,845
77 – 477 2036 946 – 7531 12,229 10,561 49,060 27,470
78 2242 1065 5251 1065 45,424 99,713 59,657 99,713 107,300 125,168
79 1324 881 4788 1483 142,782 176,636 157,444 180,088 222,983 214,245
80 1333 397 4654 712 22,991 8975 37,882 10,549 84,140 30,003
81 2897 427 14,830 3778 78,793 34,522 138,783 49,843 238,031 119,349
82 1399 163 5972 1218 47,653 921 71,458 6588 129,096 37,557
83 188 4548 1283 5489 25,655 5679 71,815 40,035
84 1610 168 4649 2331 74,304 1925 94,083 15,200 157,153 41,173
85 1704 625 7543 1121 127,880 3930 156,682 5818 228,478 47,494
86 1372 968 8205 3357 26,474 23,033 55,139 32,943 149,235 83,551
87 1289 – 6228 705 30,728 – 60,276 3085 109,861 21,646
88 231 57 1989 378 14,307 – 23,683 1743 58,737 12,306
89 840 – 6026 886 12,529 – 36,463 3529 109,722 37,451
90 1077 246 7319 2283 36,963 – 67,540 19,747 154,462 70,331
91 2078 683 7848 2067 963,689 13,171,798 994,765 13,179,819 1,072,602 13,213,049
92 321 321 754 571 15,891 16,223 17,861 17,340 41,992 30,373
93 615 46 4296 46 95,908 5642 110,589 5642 151,014 5642
94 843 – 2634 695 18,215 – 29,670 3434 62,447 18,532
95 2047 1335 8299 4062 81,083 1,981,369 114,097 1,992,744 159,187 2,026,384
96 801 11 5498 1550 11,271 152 37,282 7916 105,878 35,030
97 1188 735 4462 2222 27,244 37,235 44,367 43,840 69,892 59,809
98 1004 633 2759 1418 26,709 947,790 36,926 952,522 64,646 966,458
99 2229 881 5629 1187 32,456 802,835 49,486 803,832 102,996 832,242
100 264 – 2356 453 6455 – 19,193 3156 68,326 26,417
101 2935 817 12,471 5720 66,881 15,752 111,641 40,649 196,724 92,263
102 14 228 1350 1207 259 5048 7904 9141 46,040 32,202
103 1119 370 6488 1118 53,761 7660 88,519 11,108 135,225 32,849
104 1282 1075 4770 1430 32,445 122,704 47,239 124,193 130,668 159,704
105 1603 451 3167 1127 31,572 14,553 37,662 19,466 83,349 43,434
106 1537 – 3314 705 40,105 – 46,696 2461 92,354 30,734
107 28 – 7565 886 489 – 35,923 3952 113,052 39,003
108 2 – 950 453 1411 – 5993 3098 48,284 26,318
109 1663 1187 9295 1500 2,778,068 33,242 2,819,027 34,669 2,885,571 64,565
110 646 355 5127 355 32,246 148,925 52,503 148,925 118,371 173,701
111 1453 423 10,310 3125 26,645 4,660,811 73,480 4,673,613 150,035 4,715,862
112 4 – 201 77 212 – 1038 363 32,644 15,013
113 2384 588 14,811 4331 97,258 20,065 1,58,978 41,230 245,099 107,342
114 359 – 2180 620 5241 – 12,226 2776 77,158 34,132
115 – – 2203 194 – – 8467 618 33,314 14,637
116 – – 501 – – – 2408 – 57,151 21,413

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