The various benefits of urban green space are gaining increasing attention nowadays. Hence, the distribution of green space has become a scrutinized concern for spatial equity among local governments and the planning scholars. This study is the first quantitative evaluation of urban park accessibility using house-level data in urban China, from the perspective of social equity. We chose Nanjing as the empirical case and examined 2709 real estate units and 79 parks within the city. Accessibility is measured by the 10-min walking distance from homes to the adjacent urban parks. Using the Street Network Analysis model in ArcGIS and the statistical methods in SPSS, the result shows that 60.5% of the real estates in Nanjing are located within a 10-min walk to access urban parks. However, this accessibility is positively correlated with housing prices, and negatively correlated with the age of the buildings, holding all other factors constant. While affluent homeowners capture a high-quality green amenity, newly-built low-income communities, where most residents are classified as a vulnerable population, have the lowest percentage of accessible green space. This study reveals the existing spatial disparities of urban park accessibility among different socio-economic groups in Nanjing, China. Additionally, we found that urban redevelopment projects with greening and the large-scale affordable housing construction are pricing out the urban poor and rural immigrants from the inner city to the urban peripheral areas. This will reduce the accessibility to urban parks and other public service facilities among the lower income families, and exacerbate the inequality among the rich and the poor in terms of their quality of life. Main findings of this study can inform policy decisions regarding equitable park provision in the construction of the green city and the sustainable development in urban China and other developing countries.

Public transport brings significant benefits to the aging society by providing essential mobility to the elderly. However, few studies have investigated the factors that impact public transport use among the urban or rural elderly. This study explored the effects of personal, attitudinal, household, social environment, and built environment factors on the public transport trips of the elderly. The research data was collected from 274 urban and rural neighborhoods of Zhongshan, a medium-sized Chinese city. The negative binomial regression models suggest that, all else being equal, living in a neighborhood with a high level of public transport service, abundant green space along walking routes connecting home and bus-stops, or a relatively balanced structure of age or income is strongly connected to more public transport trips of the elderly. The results also indicate that a strong preference for public transport is significantly related to the public transport use among the elderly. These findings facilitate our understanding of the correlates of public transport use while providing insights into achieving an effective design of policies to encourage public transport use among the elderly in China.

Road safety is one of the world’s greatest public health challenges, with more than 3,500 deaths on the roads each day and estimated 50 million injuries annually (World Health Organization, 2021). This study explores the relationship between professional sporting events and vehicular crashes by examining crash data, game times, and venues using longitudinal data from Cleveland, Ohio (2017–2019). We employ two multivariate modeling analyses and spatial statistical techniques to examine the extent to which sporting events are related to car crashes before, during, and after events and the spatial relationship between where the venues are located and the number of crashes. The temporal analyses (n = 28,260) show that crashes with damage reported a significant increase, particularly after the more attended NFL games. Meanwhile, a spatial analysis (n=741) shows that the location of the sports venue also demonstrates associations with the number of crashes, while the significance varies across spatial distances. From a scholarly perspective, our study identifies the relationship between sports events and car crashes nearby sports venues, which adds to the broader literature on vehicular crashes and society. Practically, addressing this relationship can provide a concise strategy for both the public and private sectors to reduce car crashes.

Sustainable transportation is vital to climate justice and social equity. Despite the efforts to achieve sustainability, there is still a lack of adequate measurement that integrates land use and transportation systems, which can be barriers to planning implementation. With methodological improvements in fuzzy theory application, this study develops an integrated index to measure the sustainability of multimodal accessibility. We do so by defining a fuzziness degree based on the different trip purposes and modes of transportation with a case study in Isfahan, Iran. Sustainable accessibility indicators were developed for walking, biking, and public transportation to represent the performance of each transportation system, considering the integration with land-use patterns. We analyze transportation modes and the accessibility to five main urban activities, including employment opportunities, education, healthcare, shopping, and recreation services, based on the travel distances, followed by a statistical integration method with Principal Components Analysis (PCA) for each travel mode. The outcome provides insights for urban planners and transportation planners to effectively evaluate the degree of integration between transportation and land-use systems and contribute to enhancing sustainable accessibility.