Beyond urban parks: Integrating residential greenspaces to address greenspace inequality

The 11th Sustainable Development Goal highlights the urgent need to provide universal access to greenspace for urban residents. Both urban parks and residential greenspaces are important for residents due to similar functions, but previous studies have mostly focused on parks when addressing greenspace inequality. Here, we addressed this issue by simultaneously considering accessibility to residential greenspaces and parks (comprehensive accessibility), focusing on Beijing, China. We found that the accessibility based on both urban greenspaces (UGSs) differed greatly from that considering only urban parks or residential greenspaces. Comprehensive accessibility revealed unrecognized UGS shortages, with 10.87 % of residential areas (RAs) having limited access to both UGS types. Residential greenspaces and parks are spatially complementary to some degree, but should be more so. Among RAs with limited access to one type of greenspace, >30 % have high access to the other, but nearly one-third still have low access to the other. Given parks' public ownership and current extensive urban renewal projects, adding pocket parks in greenspace-deficient areas, especially limited access to both UGS types, is a feasible and effective solution to narrow UGS inequality. • We assess inequality by combining urban parks (UPs) and residential greenspaces (RGs). • Integrating UPs and RGs reveals distinct inequality compared to single-type analysis. • We identify severe shortage areas with dual lack of UPs and RGs for urgent action. • UPs and RGs are spatially complementary to some degree, but should be more so. • Urban park planning needs a complementary perspective integrating UPs and RGs.