Green areas are important in people’s lives in many aspects such as physical, psychological, social and health. This study was carried out with the objective of examining if there are differences in green area accessibility and availability in the areas with different socioeconomic backgrounds using environmental justice (EJ) perspectives. The study used secondary data from the statistics department and the Environmental protection agency and used 30 DeSO areas (Demographic statistic areas in Sweden) in Stockholm with 15 low-income areas and 15 high-income areas. Variables such as the proportion of people with foreign background, the proportion of people with high education, the proportion of children and income levels selected for the analysis for green area availability and accessibility. The results show that the selected areas have adequate and recommended green area availability irrespective of the income level. But, when it comes to the green area per capita (amount of green area per person) in the neighbourhoods, a higher statistically significant negative effect was found for the proportion of people with a foreign background. By examining the green area per capita for the social group separately, the study did not find any significant differences, which emphasize that the low-income areas with a high proportion of people with foreign background have to share green areas with many people which are a problem of the existence of an environmental injustice issue. The study showed that in the buffer area there is a favourable per capita green area compared to within the neighbourhood, which could be a risk of increasing more socio-economic segregation. The study suggests that there should be more green area recreational facilities and quality to be established around the low-income neighbourhoods with a high proportion of foreign background people. The involvement of experts from different backgrounds will be advantageous to implement successful policy and regulations for green area development. In addition, green area planning, developing and policy enforcements to be done through the participation of citizens in order to take account of ethnic consideration and individual perceptions and attitudes. The study can be further extended to a successful field study as well as by using the advanced GIS-based systems to determine the accessibility for the ethnic and religious groups of the areas in this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-44538 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Jayalatharachchi, Mithila |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Miljövetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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