Urban Sprawl, Environmental Justice and Equity in the Access to Green Spaces in the Metropolitan Area of San Luis Potosí, Mexico

Abstract

The objectives of this research are: to analyze the effects of the urban sprawl on spatial distribution and social accessibility to green spaces in the metropolitan area of San Luis Potosí, México and to assess the level of environmental justice in the Metropolitan Area of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. The study evaluates the equity in the distribution of public green spaces and their accessibility. The research questions are: how accessible are public parks or green spaces to different social groups? and, which socio spatial areas need more public green spaces or parks? The methodology relies on the environmental justice approach, through a system of indicators which allows to assess the distribution, disposability and accessibility of the population to the green spaces. The analysis of this information allows to determine the extent to which the population of the metropolitan area of San Luis Potosí, benefits from equal access to the parks of the city, through its distribution, surface, disposability and accessibility. The paper concludes that the current distribution of green spaces in the city studied presents an unequal spatial distribution pattern, which benefits population of high-income brackets and excludes the population of lower income brackets. In Mexico there are few urban studies that analyze the problem of green areas and urban parks from the perspective of environmental justice and the connections between their spatial distribution and accessibility in time and distance, and the quality of life of the population. The contribution of this work is to advance in this line of research and to propose a methodology that could be applied in other Mexican cities. One of the limitations of the study is that it was not possible to analyze the interaction between the indicators and other concepts, like biophilic cities. This could be a line of future research that would allow to delve into the complex relationship between the human being and the environment.