Do larger cities enjoy better green space accessibility? Evidence from China

Green space accessibility, which relates to the provision of public goods and services to urban residents, is central to addressing many sustainability issues in urban greening practice. As global cities are growing rapidly, it raises public debates on whether larger cities can provide more accessible green space. In this study, we investigated the correlation between multiple facets of urban scale feature and green space accessibility. To do so, we used a real-time navigation approach to map green space accessibility for 106 Chinese cities, which was consequently used to examine its correlation with urban scale features based on multiscale geographically weighted regression. The results reveal a similar pattern of decreasing green space accessibility from urban cores to peripheries in Chinese cities. Coastal cities and provincial capitals have a larger coverage of good green space accessibility (15 min and 15–30 min). Urban scale features, including population size, annual income, administrative hierarchy, public budget, and planning strategy, are positively related to green space accessibility, supporting the idea that larger cities tend to enjoy better access to green space. This finding may be attributed to the impacts of institutional role and economic power. However, urban area is negatively correlated with green space accessibility due to the prevalence of sprawling development in Chinese cities. This study can provide insights that governors and planners can apply hierarchical decision-making in planning green spaces according to the features of urban scale.