TY - JOUR

T1 - Urban green spaces for the social interaction, health and well-being of older people

T2 - An integrated view of urban ecosystem services and socio-environmental justice

AU - Enssle, Friederike

AU - Kabisch, Nadja

N1 - Funding information: This work was supported by the Research projects “Superdiversity and ageing cities?” (project duration 2017-2020, funded by the German Research Foundation DFG , Project number HE 2417/16-1 and HA 3484/8-1) and “Environmental?Health Interactions in Cities (GreenEquityHEALTH) ? Challenges for Human Well?Being under Global Changes” (project duration 2017–2022), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF; no.01LN1705A). The funding sources had no involvement in any stage of the research.

PY - 2020/7

Y1 - 2020/7

N2 - Urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services to city residents and are considered an important element of socio-environmental justice. For older people, urban green spaces are important for health and well-being because they provide spaces for physical activity and social interaction. They can be regarded as spaces of encounter. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of park visitation patterns, demographic characteristics and social network patterns, we explore older people's urban green space visitation patterns for the case of Berlin (Germany). We found that older people who have close social networks use urban parks more often than those who are more isolated in their daily lives. Self-estimated good health also contributes to more frequent park use. We discuss these findings along the three dimensions of socio-environmental justice: distributive, interactional and procedural. Based on our findings, we develop a framework that calls for an integrated view of these three justice dimensions, which all contribute equally and inseparably to a just provision of urban ecosystem services. Most importantly, we recommend urban planning to understand the city as an integrated socio-ecological system in which the planning and design of urban green spaces focus on providing ecosystem services together with enabling the creation of social networks in order to increase socio-environmental justice.

AB - Urban green spaces provide multiple ecosystem services to city residents and are considered an important element of socio-environmental justice. For older people, urban green spaces are important for health and well-being because they provide spaces for physical activity and social interaction. They can be regarded as spaces of encounter. Drawing on a comprehensive dataset of park visitation patterns, demographic characteristics and social network patterns, we explore older people's urban green space visitation patterns for the case of Berlin (Germany). We found that older people who have close social networks use urban parks more often than those who are more isolated in their daily lives. Self-estimated good health also contributes to more frequent park use. We discuss these findings along the three dimensions of socio-environmental justice: distributive, interactional and procedural. Based on our findings, we develop a framework that calls for an integrated view of these three justice dimensions, which all contribute equally and inseparably to a just provision of urban ecosystem services. Most importantly, we recommend urban planning to understand the city as an integrated socio-ecological system in which the planning and design of urban green spaces focus on providing ecosystem services together with enabling the creation of social networks in order to increase socio-environmental justice.

KW - Elderly

KW - Physical and mental health

KW - Places of encounter

KW - Socio-environmental justice

KW - Urban ecosystem services

KW - Urban parks

KW - Urban planning

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083894161&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.envsci.2020.04.008

DO - 10.1016/j.envsci.2020.04.008

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85083894161

VL - 109

SP - 36

EP - 44

JO - Environmental Science and Policy

JF - Environmental Science and Policy

SN - 1462-9011

ER -