Francini Van Staden scite author profile

Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributions across race and income geographies in urban South Africa. Using open-source satellite imagery and geographic information, along with national census statistics, we find that public and private green infrastructure is more abundant, accessible, greener and more treed in high-income relative to low-income areas, and in areas where previously advantaged racial groups (i.e. White citizens) reside.

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Fig. 8. Trajectories in neighborhood greenness (relative to city means) are fitted with linear trend line (solid lines) and generalized additive model lines (dashed) for each race category (A). The distribution of regression line slopes (i.e. slope of linear trend line in A) per census tract are displayed using a violin plot with data medians and interquartile ranges plotted with dots and horizontal bars (B).

Venter¹,

Shackleton²,

Staden³

et al. 2021

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Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributions across race and income geographies in urban South Africa. Using open-source satellite imagery and geographic information, along with national census statistics, we find that public and private green infrastructure is more abundant, accessible, greener and more treed in high-income relative to low-income areas, and in areas where previously advantaged racial groups (i.e. White citizens) reside.

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Fig. 4. Box-and-whisker plots of log-transformed monthly income for census districts with and without parks, for each race category (A). Three park attributes including distance from residence (B), the percentage of census tract covered by park (C) and park size (D) are plotted against log-transformed monthly income. Please refer to the caption in Fig. 3 for description of data points and trend lines. Park distance, size and cover are also log-transformed.

Venter¹,

Shackleton²,

Staden³

et al. 2021

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributions across race and income geographies in urban South Africa. Using open-source satellite imagery and geographic information, along with national census statistics, we find that public and private green infrastructure is more abundant, accessible, greener and more treed in high-income relative to low-income areas, and in areas where previously advantaged racial groups (i.e. White citizens) reside.

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Fig. 2. The frequency distributions of per capita monthly income are plotted, as stacked histograms for each race category (A). Median income values per race are plotted with dashed lines. The relation between monthly income and population density across racial categories is plotted with linear regression lines and 95% confidence interval ribbons (B). Each point is a census district. The frequency distribution of census tracts across proportional racial population composition are plotted in C. P

Venter¹,

Shackleton²,

Staden³

et al. 2021

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Urban green infrastructure provides ecosystem services that are essential to human wellbeing. A dearth of national-scale assessments in the Global South has precluded the ability to explore how political regimes, such as the forced racial segregation in South Africa during and after Apartheid, have influenced the extent of and access to green infrastructure over time. We investigate whether there are disparities in green infrastructure distributions across race and income geographies in urban South Africa. Using open-source satellite imagery and geographic information, along with national census statistics, we find that public and private green infrastructure is more abundant, accessible, greener and more treed in high-income relative to low-income areas, and in areas where previously advantaged racial groups (i.e. White citizens) reside.

show abstract

Francini Van Staden

Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa

Green Apartheid: Urban green infrastructure remains unequally distributed across income and race geographies in South Africa

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