Microscale socioeconomic inequalities in green space availability in relation to residential segregation: The case study of Lodz, Poland
Edyta Łaszkiewicz, Jakub Kronenberg, Szymon Marcińczak
Abstract
Socioeconomic disparities in urban green space (UGS) availability and environmental injustice may occur not only at the scale of whole cities, selected districts/neighbourhoods, but also at lower spatial scales, such as urban blocks or even individual buildings. The latter – microscale UGS disparities – reflect differences in UGS availability among inhabitants who belong to different socioeconomic status groups and inhabit different buildings or parts of buildings. This article evaluates whether disparities in UGS availability and environmental injustice may occur in microscale in cities characterized by low socioeconomic segregation in general, such as those located in Central and Eastern Europe. For this purpose, we identified microscale socioeconomic disparities in UGS availability in the central zone of Lodz (Poland) using the localized modelling technique. Then, using a spatial microsimulation experiment, we demonstrated that an increase of segregation in Lodz's central zone would increase disparities in UGS availability and the occurrence of environmental injustice there. We demonstrated that the way the patterns of segregation interplay with microscale disparities can be further linked with temporal evolution of housing stock and local housing policy. Our findings may be useful for urban planners to stimulate the spatio-social diversity of inhabitants by focusing on microscale UGS disparities.