Variation in access to urban parks across six OECD countries

Abstract Access to parks by urban residents has been associated with higher mental and physical health, social capital, community cohesion, and quality of life. Policymakers require data-driven metrics to quantify access to parks to benchmark their performance and support decisions for resource allocation. This work leverages high-resolution and globally consistent data on population from WorldPop with parks data and navigation estimates from Google Maps to quantify accessibility to parks across nearly 500 metropolitan areas in six countries, measuring: (1) the share of the population with access to parks within a 10-min walk; and (2) the median walking time to the closest park. We find large differences in access to parks both between and within countries. To demonstrate how this framework can support cross-country comparisons, we assessed access to parks by income group in French and American metropolitan areas, finding shorter walking times in low-income neighbourhoods.