Advancing green space equity via policy change: A scoping review and research agenda

Urban green spaces – including parks, trees, and other vegetated areas – are inequitably distributed in cities worldwide, as underserved groups, such as low-income and people of color, have significantly lower provisions of such resources. Motivated by the health benefits of green spaces, advocates and policymakers in several countries have sought to ameliorate these systemic inequities by implementing green space equity initiatives. Many such initiatives are individual projects (e.g., a new park in an underserved neighborhood), but new policies have also been implemented to advance green space equity. To date, limited research has examined which policies have been implemented, what it takes to adopt and implement them, and whether they have effectively advanced green space equity. Based on a scoping literature review and a workshop with an interdisciplinary group of researchers, we developed a research agenda on green space equity policy. Our research agenda includes research questions grouped into four interrelated themes: policy impact and evaluation, power building and policy change, green gentrification, and health equity and climate change. The contributions of this paper are twofold: We synthesize current knowledge on green space equity policy and present a research agenda whose findings can inform policy work on green space equity.