Abstract
This article suggests new tools for understanding and measuring how urban design affects green space accessibility: how urban structure distributes open space to people and how it creates users and stakeholders. Two similar questionnaires from 2001 and 2004 reveal that citizens in some dense inner city districts experience higher green space accessibility than citizens in some low-density ‘green’ suburbs in Stockholm. This peculiar result was the starting point of testing old and new measures in 10 different city districts using a new GIS-application ‘The Place Syntax Tool’ (PST). PST makes it possible to calculate the open space accessibility from every address point in an urban area. A new measure, which considers range (1000 m), orientation (axial line distance), green space size (sqm) and number of use values, correlated considerably better to the questionnaires (R 2=0.74, P<0.001) than any of the conventional measures. Correlation was also found when comparing another questionnaire that asked participants how often they go to their favorite green area and axial line accessibility to green areas (R 2=0.77, P=0.018). Consequently, cognitive anthropocentric measures of accessibility and attraction can change the common opinion of open space and ‘green’ from a static to a dynamic urban entity.
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Ståhle, A. More green space in a denser city: Critical relations between user experience and urban form. Urban Des Int 15, 47–67 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2009.27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2009.27