Utilizing mobile phone big data to simulate the impact of park boundary openness on the accessibility

Abstract

The openness of a park's boundary is crucial in promoting accessibility to the park. However, there are few studies that have quantified the impact of park boundary openness on accessibility at the whole-city scale. Additionally, current assessments of urban park accessibility often overlook the actual spatial distribution of the population that utilizes park services. In this research, based on billions of GPS data records of Tokyo, Japan, we simulated the impact of park boundary openness on accessibility across various scenarios, considering the actual spatial distribution of the park visitor population across the entire city region. We analyzed the impact of park boundary openness on accessibility in different categories of parks and during different visitation times. Furthermore, we examined the marginal effect of improving park boundary openness. Our results show that park accessibility increase as the park boundary openness increase. Larger parks benefit more from an improvement in boundary openness, and visitors who live closer to parks also benefit more. Additionally, the marginal utility of boundary openness improvement decreases as the number of entrances to the park increases. Our research suggests operation strategies for park boundary openness specific to different park usage pattern should be considered and developed.