Geolocated social media as a rapid indicator of park visitation and equitable park access

Authors

Zoe Hamstead - University At Buffalo

Body

Through field techniques such as observation or survey questionnaires, visitation information is somewhat regularly collected for national parks, large flagship parks and parks that draw large numbers of tourists. However, our knowledge base of a broader range of urban parks – particularly small and medium-sized community parks which may be integral to the daily routines of urban residents – is limited. Geolocated social media (GSM) is increasingly being used to gain insight into human behavior patterns. Although GSM indicators have also been used to examine park visitation rates, studies applying this approach are generally limited to flagship parks, national parks, or a small subset of urban parks. Here, we use geolocated Flickr and Twitter data to explore variation in use across New York City’s 2,143 diverse parks and model visitation based on spatially-explicit park characteristics and facilities, neighborhood-level accessibility features and neighborhood-level demographics. From a social equity perspective, our findings imply that parks in high minority neighborhoods are not as accessible, do not accommodate as many visitors, and/or are of lower quality than those in low-minority neighborhoods. These implications are consistent with previous studies showing that minority populations disproportionately experience barriers to park access. In applying GSM data to questions of park access, we demonstrate a rapid, big data approach for providing information crucial for park management in a way that is less resource-intensive than field surveys.
Keywords:Urban parks, Big data, Equity planning, Park accessibility, Geolocated social media

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