Urban Green Infrastructure Accessibility: Investigating Environmental Justice in a European and Global Green Capital

Abstract

Access to green spaces offers numerous benefits to citizens and is key to achieving environmental justice. This article explores accessibility to green infrastructure (GI) in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, the European and Global Green Capital in 2012 and 2019. Vitoria-Gasteiz was selected as a case study because it combines actions aimed at promoting green infrastructure in the city along with an urban model that in recent years has favored more expansive urbanism. Manhattan distance and configurational analysis is used to investigate accessibility to the most relevant elements of the GI system and their integration in the urban tissue. Considering the actual pedestrian mobility network, configurational accessibility is examined globally and locally with 1 km and 300 m radii. The analysis reveals great differences both in global and local configurational accessibility across fifty components of the GI system that are greater than 0.5 ha and open for public use. It also shows that, while almost all inhabitants (97.9%) reside within 1 km from these green areas, 27.7% of the population live more than 300 m away. The investigation demonstrates the need to improve the city’s GI to provide universal accessibility to green spaces. It offers useful methods that planning professionals and local administrations can use to assess residents’ access to green areas and guide future GI transformation and development towards environmental justice.