| dc.description.abstract | Green spaces are crucial for urban functioning, since they provide many indispensable benefits.
Considering these benefits, urban green spaces (UGS) should be equally distributed over the
population. However, this is not always the case: many scholars believe that neighbourhoods with a
high socioeconomic status (SES) have more greenery than neighbourhoods with a low SES.
Additionally, UGS is often treated as an uniform whole, with no distinction between public and
private, even though they have different meanings to their users. The following research will
consider these issues in Amsterdam. This thesis therefore has three aims: (1) to develop a method to
properly distinguish between private and public vegetation; (2) to provide insight into the spatial
equality of the distribution of urban green spaces in Amsterdam; and (3) to contribute to the broader
societal dialogue concerning spatial justice in relation to UGS. These objectives generated the
following research question: How spatially equal is the distribution of private and public green spaces
in the city of Amsterdam and how does this relate to the spatial justice debate? In this GIS-based
research, a distinction between private and public green spaces will be made and the distributions of
those will be studied in relation to SES. Afterwards, the results will be validated by linking them to
existing literature. The results show great disparities in the amount of green space between
neighbourhoods. Residents of neighbourhoods located more in the outskirts of the city have access
to more private and public UGS. Private green space is more equally distributed than public green
space, but still with large differences. Additionally, high SES neighbourhoods are located in the city
centre and south of the centre, whereas low SES neighbourhoods are found more towards the
boundaries of the city. Visual interpretation of these patterns suggests that areas with lower SES
generally provide access to slightly more total, private and public UGS than high SES neighbourhoods.
Yet, these observations are largely invalidated by statistical analysis. The unequal distribution of UGS
in Amsterdam therefore seems to be the result of other factors, besides neighbourhood SES. These
findings for Amsterdam do therefore not correspond to the dominant spatial justice paradigm that
more SES is accompanied with more UGS, but can be linked to conclusions of scholars who state that
other factors should be taken into consideration when determining spatial justice and that results
may vary across space. | |
