Comparing green spaces provision and accessibility indicators over a latitudinal gradient and multiple climate zones

Monitoring urban green space (UGS) indicators is key to assessing progress against the UNs sustainable development goals (SDGs). Within these indicators, measuring the provision of UGS as well as its accessibility is considered a major objective. However, neither the relationship between the two indicators, nor differences related to different types of UGS have been adequately evaluated. In this paper, these two indicators are calculated and analyzed for four size-based types of UGS and for 69 municipalities, which are part of the 16 regional capital cities of Chile. For the provision indicator, the average calculated over all municipalities does not reach the often proposed standard of 11 sq.m/inhab., but only 5.29 sq.m/inhab. Regarding the accessibility indicator, when a walking speed of 4 km/h is considered, the smaller residential green spaces have the highest accessibility (65 % of the population have access), but accessibility for larger GS is low. When a walking speed of 2 km/h is assumed, then accessibility drops to 29 %, 5 %, 5 % and 5 % respectively. We found that calculation results for the four types of UGS are statistically different, and therefore one type cannot replace another in case of monitoring: Higher UGS provision does not guarantee higher accessibility.