IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i9p3774-d1639851.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Poorer the Neighborhood, the Harder It Is to Reach the Park: A GIS Equity Analysis from Salt Lake City

Author

Listed:
  • Ivis Garcia

    (Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA)

Abstract

Inequitable access to parks persists in cities where race, income, and geography shape residents’ proximity to public green space. This study analyzes 20 parks in Salt Lake City—10 in the Eastside and 10 in the Westside—using demographic, housing, and transportation data drawn from GIS tools and spatial platforms. By assessing indicators such as household income, racial composition, rent burden, walkability, and transit access, the findings confirm that Westside parks—located in lower-income and more racially diverse neighborhoods—are significantly less accessible. Eastside parks, by contrast, tend to serve higher-income, majority-white areas with better infrastructure. This paper illustrates how spatial inequality in surrounding conditions limits park accessibility, and it proposes GIS as a tool for diagnosing and addressing environmental injustice in urban planning.

Suggested Citation

  • Ivis Garcia, 2025. "The Poorer the Neighborhood, the Harder It Is to Reach the Park: A GIS Equity Analysis from Salt Lake City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-10, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3774-:d:1639851
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3774/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3774/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3774-:d:1639851. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.