What Shapes Uneven Access to Urban Amenities? Thick Injustice and the Legacy of Racial Discrimination in Denver’s Parks

Abstract

Like other urban amenities, parks are unevenly distributed throughout cities, with advantaged groups enjoying better access to better parks than more disadvantaged residents. Although such inequities are well documented, we know less about the mechanisms that shape them. We conduct a case study in Denver that includes a GIS analysis and interviews with local planners and historians. We find that while park funding systems have tended to steer investments into richer neighborhoods, racially discriminatory land use and housing policies that shape where low-income people of color can live have produced some of the deepest and most persistent inequities in access to parks. Recent improvements in park access for low-income people of color are based less on equity-oriented efforts by public agencies and more on residential location choices of affluent white residents.