Given that over 80% of the world's GDP is generated in urban centers, effective urban management has the potential to drive sustainable growth through enhanced productivity and innovation (Ibid.). However, amidst this growth, it's imperative to also prioritize sustainability and inclusivity from a social perspective. Aligned with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, which advocates for "making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable" (United Nations - Department of Economic and Social Affairs Sustainable Development, n.d.), this project focuses on SDG 11 Indicator 11.7.1. This indicator aligns with Target 11.7, which aims to provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities by 2030 (Ibid.). Specifically, Indicator 11.7.1 evaluates the "average share of the built-up area of cities that is open space for public use for all, by sex, age, and persons with disabilities." (Ibid.). Achieving SDG 11 necessitates effective monitoring and assessment mechanisms to track progress and guide policy decisions. In recent years, the utilization of geospatial data has emerged as a powerful tool in this effort. Although cities and urban areas have evolved as interfaces in the global economy, the data available for analyzing their dynamics is often inadequate (Lin and Mele, 2013; Acuto et al., 2018; Lobo et al.,2020 cited in Melchiorri, 2022).
This repository allows you to recreate our analysis or apply it to another use case. The SDG 11.7 will be assessed by monitoring the access to green and public spaces along with public buildings (= POIs). Access can be defined as wheelchair-friendly (main focus) or by inclusitivity in terms of of entry fees or the need to consumpt to be able to interact with that POI.
- You will need to unzip some folders before starting the analysis
- You might encounter problems cloning this repository (or at least not all data will be downloaded) because of the use of git LFS. To bypass this, download the input data as well as the result folder (if necessary) via the user interface of github and move them to accordingly the folder structure.
- If you want to apply this script to a city outside of Europe, you will need to change the profile for 'wheelchair' in the ORS isochrones script since this is only provided in Europe.