Accessibility Improvement and Renewal of Urban Park Green Space for the Elderly and the Disabled

Abstract

With the global population aging, balancing urban development with the social lives of the elderly and disabled has become an important issue. Network analysis was employed as the primary research method, utilizing tools such as Network Analysis on the ArcGIS platform and Python. To enhance the applicability of the analytical model in population demand and travel characteristic studies, a dataset was established based on the behavioral characteristics of elderly and disabled individuals. Resistance values and evaluation indicators were selected for this purpose. We summarized the travel preferences of the elderly and disabled and proposed corresponding accessibility optimization strategies. Through the analysis of the experimental results, we believe that setting the optimization goal as a 10-min walk for the elderly and a 500-m walk for the disabled to access parks and green spaces is reasonable. Additionally, the service area ratio and service population ratio should exceed 90% to ensure equitable access to the ecological services of urban parks for the elderly and disabled population. We also found that connecting and extending linear green spaces are of significant importance in improving green space accessibility, because linear green spaces have more entrances and exits than dot green spaces and area green spaces.