Transcending the urban-rural dichotomy: inequality in urban green space availability among urban neighbourhoods, urban villages and rural villages in Guangzhou, China

Urban green spaces (UGS) are integral to sustainable urban development, yet the urbanization process has resulted in unequal distributions of green resources across different neighbourhoods. In Chinese cities, there are three primary types of neighbourhoods with different socioeconomic features - rural villages (RV), urban villages (UV), and urban neighbourhoods (UN). They usually have different green space availability, posing challenges to environmental justice. However, the Green space inequality concerning neighbourhood types has not yet been fully explored. Drawing on the case of Guangzhou, we examine inequalities in UGS availability among these three types of neighbourhoods. We first explored the inequality in UGS availability among UN, UV and RV by employing the Gini and Theil indices and then used the eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) model and the SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) explainer to elucidate the intricate association between neighbourhood socioeconomic statuses and UGS availability from a local perspective. Our findings indicate that UN and UV have similar levels of inequality in UGS availability, which is more severe compared to RV. Neighbourhoods with high population density and sufficient job opportunities in UN and UV, as well as those with low housing prices, low-salary and low-educated jobs in UN and RV, are suffering from UGS inequality. This study unveils the spatial disparity of UGS inequality among different types of neighbourhoods, providing insights into equal green space planning and contributing to environmental justice.