A well-designed layout for urban parks plays a crucial role in constructing livable cities and enhancing residents’ well-being. The provision of age-friendly park access is fundamental to building an elderly-friendly city. However, previous studies have lacked comprehensive analyses that integrate the distribution of the elderly population, park accessibility, park quality, environmental characteristics, and social equity within a unified framework. Specifically, the supply–demand imbalance mechanism underlying the spatial variations in accessibility has not been adequately addressed. This study employs an improved two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method, combined with Lorenz curves and urban park-adapted Gini coefficients, to examine the supply–demand relationship and allocation differences between the elderly population and parks at the neighborhood and community levels. The analysis highlights issues related to equity and accessibility and explores their spatial disparity and influencing factors. The key findings are as follows: (1) The classic 2SFCA model exhibits significant biases in evaluating park supply–demand relationships, accessibility, and equity at a fine-grained scale, indicating the necessity of high-precision modeling. (2) Park accessibility in the Old City of Nanjing follows a dual-ring pattern of high accessibility, contrasted with clustered areas of low accessibility, while accessibility equity shows a central–peripheral gradient. Overall equity is relatively low, with good walking accessibility within only about one-third of communities. (3) Park supply levels, neighborhood construction year, and plot ratios are the primary factors influencing park accessibility for elderly residents. The comprehensive aging index is positively correlated with the equity in park layout, whereas housing prices and neighborhood size do not exhibit a simple linear relationship with park accessibility or equity for elderly residents. These findings provide a comprehensive and realistic perspective for understanding elderly park accessibility and equity, offering decision-making references for enhancing urban livability, managing an aging society, and formulating spatial equity policies in the future.
Xu et al. (Sat,) studied this question.