Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 57 (2021) 126916 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Urban Forestry & Urban Greening journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ufug Accessibility of public recreational parks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A GIS based analysis at sub-city level Sisay Seifu a,*, Till Stellmacher b a Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development (EiABC), Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 518, EiABC-Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia b Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Handling Editor: Raffaele Lafortezza Cities in sub-Saharan Africa are rapidly growing and transforming. This leads to increased demand for accessible urban green spaces (UGSs). Various efforts have been made in order to address these issues. However, despite the Keywords: abundant scientificliterature available on the accessibility of UGSs in many parts of the world, only a few studies Addis Ababa have been conducted in sub-Saharan Africa and particularly in Ethiopia. The aim of this study is to fill this Ethiopia research gap with an empirical investigation of the accessibility of 23 existing public recreational parks (clas­ Network analysis sifiedhierarchically in City, Sub-city and Woreda Parks) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by using a GIS based network Public recreational parks Sub-Saharan Africa analysis method at the sub-city level. The study is particularly relevant and urgent as the Addis Ababa City Urban green spaces Council is currently planning to establish 2730 ha of new recreational park area until 2027. The results show that the public recreational parks in Addis Ababa are relatively few in numbers, small in size and cover large service areas. Moreover they are unevenly distributed throughout the city. Six out of ten sub-cities - in which more than 70 % of the inhabitants of Addis Ababa live - have relatively few parks. A wide variation in the accessibility exists for the three park types. Low accessibility was particularly recorded for City and Woreda Parks, and for the outskirts of the city. The proposed plan by the Addis Ababa City Council has the potential to reduce this gap, but its concept to dedicate 89.2 % of the newly established park area as City Parks and only 2% as Woreda Parks does not match with the actual accessibility problems. It is therefore recommended to establish many small size Woreda Parks, which often provide important day-to-day benefits to the nearby residents, instead of few large City Parks. The plan should focus on sub-cities in the South and East of Addis Ababa which are park-deficient, and there especially on areas with ‘poorer’ communities. These sub-cities have less built-up areas, so more space for new parks, but a high current and future demand, mainly due to rapid population growth promoted through mass housing development projects. 1. Introduction (Biernacka and Kronenberg, 2018). In this study, we consider public recreational parks as green spaces reserved primarily for recreational Urban green spaces (UGSs) provide multiple ecosystem services to services to the general public free of charge. The term accessible green humans such as air purification,microclimate modification,mental and spaces has been coined in the early 1990s when the Accessible Natural physical health benefits, social interaction and community integration Green Space Standard (ANGSt) was developed in the UK based on (Maas et al., 2006; Escobedo and Nowak, 2009; Lafortezza et al., 2009; research on the minimum distance residents should travel to reach a Maas et al., 2009). In recent years, UGSs are considered as an indicator natural environment (Natural England, 2010). However, the issue of of the quality of urban life. Their distribution and ease of access are seen accessibility gained more recognition after the United Nations (UN) as key contributors for ecological and social functions of urban envi­ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set a target to provide “universal ronments and for environmental justice (Barbosa et al., 2007; Wendel access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in et al., 2012; Wolch et al., 2014). UGSs are most accessible when they can particular for women and children, older persons and persons with be reached, entered and safely used at any time, without restriction disabilities” (UN, 2015). * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Seifu), [email protected] (T. Stellmacher). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126916 Received 5 March 2020; Received in revised form 29 October 2020; Accepted 10 November 2020 Available online 23 November 2020 1618-8667/© 2020 Published by Elsevier GmbH. S. Seifu and T. Stellmacher Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 57 (2021) 126916 Addis Ababa was established as a city in 1886, and the idea of urban 2. Methods green spaces was integrated in the first city master plan in 1936 (Mahiteme, 2007; Aragaw, 2011). During these times, planners strived 2.1. Study site to pay special regard to landscaping and the preservation of a green belt (e.g. the forested Entoto hills north to the city), the planting of gardens The study has been conducted in Addis Ababa, federal capital of and squares, and the greening of river banks (Mahiteme, 2007; Fetene Ethiopia, located in the center of the country (Fig. 1) at an elevation of and Worku, 2013). However, most of the planning did not materialize. about 2400 masl. The city is the political, economic and cultural hub of Widespread, often unplanned and informal, sprawl of settlements in Ethiopia with around 4.5 million inhabitants living on an area of 527 Addis Ababa, a regime change in 1975, followed by civil war that km2 (CIA, 2019). Addis Ababa also serves as the capital city of Oromia devastated the country, and another regime change in 1991, made Region and headquarters of the African Union. The city was founded planning efforts difficult (Terfa et al., 2019). Moreover, the population only 134 years ago in the north (todays Gulele) and spread in all di- grew rapidly. In ten years between 1984 and 1994, the population of rections, but mainly to the south. Today Addis Ababa is administered in Addis Ababa nearly doubled from around 1.4 million to 2.7 million 10 sub-cities and 116 woredas (districts). Sub-cities are the hierarchical (CSA, 1984, 1994). Currently, its population is estimated at 4.5 million administrative structure under the city administration, and are respon- (CIA, 2019). Population growth went along with an expansion of set- sible for socio-economic growth and development within their tlement areas often at the expense of UGSs (Abo-El-Wafa et al., 2018; boundaries. Arsiso et al., 2018). Research conducted by Zewdie et al. (2017) on land use and land cover change in Addis Ababa shows a 50 % increase in the 2.2. Spatial data acquisition and accessibility analysis urban area and a decline in agricultural and forest land by 34 % and 16 %, respectively, between 1984 and 2014. The Addis Ababa City Council Baseline data about the public recreational parks in Addis Ababa was (AACC) Structural Plan for the year 2017–2027 estimated the per capita obtained from the Addis Ababa City Government River Basins and Green green space in the city at 1 square-meter per person. This is far behind Areas Development and Administration Agency (AARBGADAA). The the World Health Organization (WHO) standard of 9 and the African study considers all 23 public recreational parks in Addis Ababa (cate- standard of 7 square-meter per person (AACC, 2017). In order to in- gorized into City, Sub-city and Woreda Parks) with a total area of 75.01 crease the per capita green space, the AACC structural plan ambitiously ha. Table 1 shows the details of the park categories. Our study focused proposed to establish new public recreational parks with a total size of only on the top three park categories, excluding the neighborhood parks, 2730 ha (classifiedin 2437 ha City Parks, 237 ha Sub-city Parks and 56 due to the unavailability of data. ha Woreda Parks) until 2027. However, the AACC structural plan There is one City Park (Bihere Tsige Park, in Nefas Silk sub-city), 16 focusses on increasing the per capita green space, largely ignoring the Sub-city Parks and 6 Woreda Parks in Addis Ababa. Physical visits were actual distribution and accessibility gap of the 23 already existing public made to all these 23 parks to evaluate their current status ‘on the recreational parks. Upon this backdrop this study aims to scientifically ground’. Global Positioning System (GPS) points were taken to locate assess the distribution of the existing public recreational parks in Addis the parks on the map. A list of the investigated parks with detailed in- Ababa, and to identify accessibility gaps across the city. By this, the formation is presented in Appendix A. Satellite data for Addis Ababa was study can help to avoid unnecessary waste of time and resources, and to acquired from Google Earth; converted and geo-referenced in ArcGIS contribute to the better implementation of the AACC structural plan. 10.3.1 (ESRI, 2015). Shape files of the parks were manually digitized In recent years, many studies on UGSs in sub-Saharan Africa have based on GPS points overlaid on the geo-referenced image, and saved as been conducted. They include, for example, an overview on the nature a polygon feature. The park entry (access) points were also manually and challenges of UGSs in Africa (Mensah, 2014), the planning and digitized and saved as point feature. Table 2 shows an overview of the management of UGSs in South Africa (Chishaleshale et al., 2015), and spatial data used for the analysis. several studies on green infrastructure and ecosystem services (Du Toit The data on the residential areas of Addis Ababa was extracted from et al., 2018; Lindley et al., 2018; Shackleton et al., 2018).