Connecting park access and use data for equitable environmental planning

To ensure equity in the provisioning of urban green spaces, both how green spaces are distributed (i.e., access) as well as whether residents are utilizing them (i.e., use) needs to be considered simultaneously. Yet, few green space equity studies have considered both access and use together, and the fragmented literature provides only a partial view of each. This disconnection partly lies in challenges in integrating disparate “access” and “use” datasets. Using the Phoenix-Mesa urbanized area in Arizona as a case study, we present the conceptual and data challenges we have encountered when linking park access using the Trust for Public Land dataset with park usage measured from large scale human mobility datasets (SafeGraph, now Advan). We then show how the choices of data integration can affect findings of green space equity in the study area. In this paper, we enumerate the data and analytical issues encountered, illustrate research opportunities that the data integration provides for green space equity analyses, and discuss the implications of our findings for equitable environmental planning and policy.