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Characteristics of urban gardens and their accessibility to locals and non-locals in Taipei City, Taiwan

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Abstract

The benefits and services of urban gardens (UGs) in urbanized areas are being increasingly recognized, leading to widespread enhancement of efforts in protection and provision. At present, several types of UGs created under the policy of “The Garden City Initiative” (GCI) exist in Taipei City, Taiwan, and four types of UGs, namely Allotment Garden (AG), Happy Garden (HG), Rooftop Garden (RG), and School Garden (SG), have been created using vacant lots and rooftop spaces developed via GCI. To clarify the characteristics of UGs in Taipei City, this paper first analyzes the changes in the number and surface area of each type of UG during 2015–2019. Second, using the 2019 data on all 201 UGs (18 AGs, 107 HGs, and 76 RGs) and excluding SGs that are only accessible by school students, this paper clarifies the spatial distribution of UGs in each district of Taipei City and the accessibility of UGs to locals and non-locals using a geographic information system. Furthermore, correlations between the accessibility of UGs to both locals and non-locals and their surface areas were evaluated. As a result, positive correlation was observed between the accessibility of UGs to locals and non-locals in seven districts, suggesting that both locals and non-locals have equal access to UGs. Lastly, the characteristics of UGs realized in Taipei City under GCI and their accessibility to locals and non-locals are discussed and conclusions are drawn on the implications for the utilization of vacant lots and rooftop spaces as UGs.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks for the support of JSPS and the data provision from Taipei City Government. The experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed. The author would like to thank Enago (www.enago.jp) for the English language review.

Funding

This paper is supported by a part of grants (Number 19K15174) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka City University, Room C423, Faculty of Engineering, OCU, 3-3-138, Sugimoto, Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka City, 558-8585, Japan

    Hongwei Hsiao

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  1. Hongwei Hsiao
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Correspondence to Hongwei Hsiao.

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Hsiao, H. Characteristics of urban gardens and their accessibility to locals and non-locals in Taipei City, Taiwan. Landscape Ecol Eng 17, 41–53 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-020-00430-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11355-020-00430-x

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