Relation between proximity to public open spaces and socio-economic level in three cities in the Ecuadorian Andes

Public Open Spaces (POSs) are necessary urban goods for satisfying personal and collective needs for physical, social and mental wellbeing. Equitable spatial access to POSs is key for guaranteeing that resources for wellbeing are democratically available for all members of the community. Environmental justice states that contemporary cities have a biased distribution of public spaces, against socially and economically more disadvantaged sectors of society. Under these premises, this paper evaluates whether there is a case of environmental imbalance in access to public spaces in three Ecuadorian cities: Quito, Cuenca and Ibarra, based on the socio-economic status of the population. A pedestrian impedance street network model was used for obtaining time to the nearest Public Open Space from each urban block, and socio-economic conditions were obtained from national census data per household and divided into quartiles. Statistical analyses included Mood's Median Test, Dunn's post-hoc test and notched boxplots for assessment. Results show that there is a significant difference in time to public spaces between quartiles, where the quartile with the lowest socioeconomic conditions is also further from public spaces than the others in the three cities. These results should inform planning policies, strategies, designs and decisions for future leisure land use reserves.