[pp.69-76]

Assessing the accessibility of neighborhood parks in the urban area of Kyoto City, Japan

Shiwei GOU, Katsue FUKAMACHI and Shozo SHIBATA （Kyoto University）

Abstract:
Neighborhood parks play a significant role in promoting community welfare among the local residents, and should ideally be located for convenient access. However, conventional metrics of accessibility fail to take the complex street patterns of Japanese neighborhoods into account. The research reported here involved studying street patterns around 30 neighborhood parks in the urban area of Kyoto City from the viewpoints of geometric distance (using the service area ratio from service area analysis in ArcGIS as an indicator) and spatial configuration (calculated using the combination parameter of integration and choice from space syntax analysis). The results showed that topographic conditions and urban planning considerations account for the majority of variations in accessibility among different neighborhoods. The average favorable condition of accessibility in Kyoto City is largely due to the location of neighborhoods in the old historic area, where streets have a more syntactic and intelligible layout. Comprehensive city planning helps to improve accessibility in terms of the metric distance to some extent. Based on the two viewpoints outlined above, the results of this research proved useful for further clarifying the spatial distribution of neighborhood parks and for the development of more powerful tools to evaluate accessibility.

Key Word:
neighborhood park, accessibility, space syntax analysis, network analysis, urban planning

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