Analysis of Access to Urban Parks with a Spatial Justice Approach(Case Study: Ilam City)

Urban parks are an essential part of city's landscapes and their existence is necessary for citizen's health. Therefore, achieving spatial justice requires urban planners to allocate sufficient amounts of these spaces for cities and provide equal access of all residences to the parks.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the availability of urban parks, distribution of these spaces and their accessibility in the city of Ilam. Research

The research is applied in nature and has analytical-evaluation method. The research data were documentary and included GIS shape files of Ilam land use and statistical blocks of 2016 population censuses. Descriptive statistics and buffering techniques in GIS were used for data analysis.

Findings showed that Ilam is much lower than the set standards so that only 2% of its surface area is covered with parks and per capita urban park is only 2-5 m2. Also, the distribution of these spaces in the city is not balanced so that the concentration of these spaces in the northern half of the city is far greater than the south and the center of the city. While one-third of the city's area and one-third of the city's population, which are mainly in the southern parts of the city, are not in the coverage area of parks, they are overlapping in some northern parts to even nine coverage areas. The difference in ‘per capita access to parks’ across the city is about 10 times.

The index of ‘per capita access’ in analyzing accessibility is a new method that it has not been used in research in Iran so far.