Visualizing disparities in park access for the elderly in Shanghai, China

摘要

With China ageing rapidly, the health of the elderly has become a public concern. Access to urban parks, offering both physical and psychological health benefits to people, is critical for the elderly. To explore whether there are disparities in park access for the elderly, we collected and processed population data, point of interest and travel time from census tracts to parks by public transport in Shanghai. The visuals based on the data indicate that, in Shanghai, most of the elderly are able to reach large parks in 30 minutes, but gaps remain in the number of accessible parks. Although the ageing population living between the inner ring road and the external ring road is as large as that inside the inner ring road, the number of accessible parks for this population is much lower than for the latter.