Many public urban parks, but who profits from them? The example of Tabriz, Iran

Public urban parks are accessible to everyone in a city. The time people need to reach a public park influences the accessibility of the park. Parks far away from home are less accessible because of time to spend to reach them than those in the neighborhood. Good green urban infrastructure aims to provide different types of parks (by size and structure) to all urban dwellers. The network of parks should allow all inhabitants to have access to parks within close proximity to their residences. This paper aims to investigate the accessibility of parks as related to the social status of the inhabitants. This was investigated using the example of a clearly socially stratified city (Tabriz, Iran), in which a part of the urban society (by total number and social status) has better or worse access to urban parks. The example of urban parks shows which services are supplied on site and who the potential users are within an accessible distance. The services are qualified by structural park indicators and quantified by the quantity of these indicators. The distances are calculated on the basis of the size of the parks. Different distance circles around the parks indicate from where most of the users are coming, depending on park category. A quantification of population as related to potential users by social status in different distances to the parks shows the accessibility of parks for different quantities of inhabitants and different social strata. The classification of social status (high, middle, and low) was carried out by General Census of statistical center in 2005, informal settlement project data, statistical blocks data, land price in Tabriz municipality, and master and detailed plan reports. Many households do not enjoy government recommended levels of access to public green spaces in Tabriz, and the results highlight the social segregation in park distribution and their accessibility. The best parks are located in the high social status areas, and the accessibility is the best among all societal levels.