Accessing green space in Melbourne: Measuring inequity and household mobility

Economically disadvantaged communities living in neighborhoods with low access to green space are known to experience a heightened burden of health issues, leading to intergenerational well-being problems. However, relatively little is known about the extents and causes of green space inequalities among different social communities. To explore this in the metropolitan Melbourne area, we use the 2016 Census data of equivalised household income and calculate local indicators of spatial association (LISA) between low-income proportion and green space access at a suburb level. We show that the distribution of green space in Melbourne favors more affluent communities, meaning that there are lower concentrations of low-income households in greener areas. The Mann–Whitney U statistics applied to LISA clusters also indicates statistically significant inequity in access to green space for low-income communities. Secondly, the paper shows that low-income households’ relocation and provision of human-modified green space exacerbate inequality in green space access over time. Mobility patterns show the movement of low-income people from high-green areas to low-green areas over time. The spatial analysis of green space types reveals that the location of human-modified green spaces has a significant correlation with (non-randomly distributed) natural green spaces.