PS 48-254 - CANCELLED - Leveraging cellular mobility data for sustainable park management to support people and nature

Abstract: Background & Methods
Most people live in cities, and there are increasing calls to design urban green spaces to support access to nature and human well-being. Parks are an excellent example since it provides many roles, such as supporting biodiversity, reduction of urban heat islands, socializing, and recreation. Particularly, people living close to these parks can escape the heat and recreate during summer, especially if they lack access to cooling support mechanisms (e.g., backyards). However, inequalities exist in terms of the location and accessibility of city parks, and it is not clear how and where residents are accessing parks. Quantifying park use (as human activity) in green spaces is one way to help planners strategically place and design parks, including amenities. Here, we propose using anonymized GPS data (Mapbox; www.mapbox.com) from smart devices as a proxy for park use over space and time, which was effectively ground-truthed with park reservation data from a previous study. For this study, we were interested in whether park access is equitable among residents and if park use varies with daily weather patterns. To address this objective, we collated sociodemographic data (including census tracts), anonymized mobility data, park boundaries, and daily weather patterns for summer 2021 across 33 of the largest parks in Toronto, Canada.

Results and Discussion

Our preliminary findings show that there is indeed inequitable access to large parks for city residents in the City of Toronto. For instance, people living in apartment buildings, situated in highly dense neighbourhoods, or who do not have a car tend to have lower accessibility to parks with a high proportion of provisioning (i.e., more park area per person). For drivers of park use, parks with high levels of human activity were positively associated with a higher population and a high number of amenities with parks. Further, higher park use tends to occur during the weekends and holidays on hotter days when compared to weekdays, although there were many idiosyncratic responses where weekdays and rainy days had higher activity. Overall, there is clear potential for anonymized mobility data to support park design and management with positive societal outcomes and equity-led accessibility. Thus, we also highlight future research avenues such as relating park activity to extreme heat events (human health) and how high access to parks may be related to high property values of private residential homes (economic benefit).