ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Urban Science
This article is part of the Research TopicTowards Sustainable Cities and Communities: Comprehensive Evaluation and Optimization Strategies of the Built EnvironmentView all 6 articles
Contrasting differences of the green space accessibility utility: a study of 30 major cities in China
Provisionally accepted
Yongli Zhang1Caixia Xu1
Liqun Sun1,2*Jiawen Zhao1Yuxiang Zhang1Yutong Xiang1Wei Feng1,2Tao Zhou1
Chan Zhou1- 1Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen, China
- 2Shenzhen University of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Green spaces provision for urban residents is one of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, whether urban residents can readily access green space remains unanswered, both physically and mentally. This paper proposes a new indicator—Green Space Accessibility Utility (GSAU) based on three indicators—Green Space Accessibility (GSA), Green Space Accessibility Inequality (GSAI), and Travel Aversion Index (TAI), aiming at revealing green space accessibility and inequality for residents of the 30 major Chinese cities based on both physical and mental attributes. We found that: (1) GSA of megacities is approximately 1.5 times that of large cities and demonstrates consistent enhancement with increasing walking scale. (2) Although GSA in eastern cities is roughly twice that in western cities, GSAI in the east is about 1.6 times higher than in the west, revealing a distinct inequality paradox, particularly acute within eastern megacities. (3) GSAU in southern cities is about 15% higher than in northern cities, and this regional disparity can be amplified to 30% under seasonal influences, GSAU in northern cities is more susceptible to seasonal fluctuations. These findings contribute to evaluating the effectiveness of urban green space utilization, informing the development of context-appropriate planning strategies, and promoting sustainable urban development.
Keywords: 15-minute city, green space accessibility, Inequality, Spatial differentiation, utility
Received: 04 Dec 2025; Accepted: 28 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zhang, Xu, Sun, Zhao, Zhang, Xiang, Feng, Zhou and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Liqun Sun
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.