Green Urban Public Spaces Accessibility: A Spatial Analysis for the Urban Area of the 14 Italian Metropolitan Cities Based on SDG Methodology

Abstract

Among the most significant impacts related to the spread of settlements and the densification of urban areas, the reduction in the availability of public green spaces plays a central role in the definition of livable cities, in terms of the environment and social cohesion, interaction, and equality. In the framework of target 11.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 11, the United Nations has established the objective of ensuring universal, safe, and inclusive access to public spaces by 2030, for women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. This study proposes the evaluation of this objective for the urban area of the 14 Italian metropolitan cities, as defined by EUROSTAT and adopted by the United Nations and the Nature Restoration Law (NRL). A methodology based on open-source data and network analysis tools is tested for the provision of an unprecedented mapping of the availability and accessibility to green urban public spaces, which shows that less than 30% of metropolitan city residents have access to a green space within 300 m on foot, according to OpenStreetMap data (less than one in five for the Urban Atlas data). Furthermore, a critical analysis on the geometric and semantic definition of green urban public spaces adopted by the main European and international tools is carried out, which underlines the strategic role of crowdsourcing but also the need for mapping rules that make the data more consistent with the monitoring objectives set at the institutional level.