England

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Englands green and pleasant land spatial
inequalities in green space
ESRC/NERC Environmental Inequalities Seminar
6 Inequalities, Greenspace and the Natural
Environment The Royal Society, Edinburgh 12-13
September 2007 Meg Huby Department of Social
Policy Steve Cinderby Stockholm Environment
Institute at York Annemarieke de Bruin
Department of Social Policy Piran White
Environment Department
www.sei.se/relu University of York
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Englands green and pleasant land spatial
inequalities in green space

1. Brief outline of the RELU project
2. Defining green space across LSOAs in England
3. Measuring inequality in rural and urban areas
4. Differences between English regions
5. Effect of changing the base spatial unit
6. Relating inequality to inequity

www.sei.se/relu University of York
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Englands green and pleasant land spatial
inequalities in green space
Work based on a project in the Rural Economy
Land Use Programme (RELU) RELU aims to advance
understanding of the social, economic,
environmental and technical challenges faced by
rural areas Aim of the earlier scoping study To
integrate natural and social science data into a
spatial dataset that can be used for analysis to
inform rural policy-making and provide a
knowledge base for furthering policy integration
www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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Gini coefficient Gini coefficient Gini coefficient
All England LSOAs Urban LSOAs Rural LSOAs
total green space 0.716 0.755 0.531
woodland 0.918 0.948 0.773
grassy green space 0.745 0.779 0.582
www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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Comparing Gini coefficients calculated for
different BSUs
LSOA CAS ward
total green 0.531 0.466
woodland 0.773 0.679
grassy cover 0.582 0.520
www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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www.sei.se/relu University of York
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Good environmental conditions Poor environmental conditions
Good socio-economic conditions
Poor socio-economic conditions Focus groups Focus groups
www.sei.se/relu University of York
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• Lower-level Super Output Areas (SOAs)
• specifically designed for collection
  publication of small area statistics
• consistent in terms of population size (average
  400 households)
• allow release of data unavailable at lower Output
  Area level
• linked to postcodes
• can be aggregated to other administrative units
• no physical reality on the ground
• variable in area (0.16 to 16.5km2)
• polygon boundaries not linked to grid squares
  used for collection of much environmental data

University of York
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• 2004 Rural - Urban Definition
• settlements with population gt 10,000 defined as
  urban
• others rural
• Rural classification based on morphology and
  sparsity measured for 1ha grid squares.
• SOA Morphology
• small towns
• villages and dispersed dwellings
• SOA Sparsity
• drop-off in population density away from centre

University of York