Examining social inequalities in urban public leisure spaces provision using principal component analysis

Nowadays, urban planners are discovering the potential of public leisure spaces (PLSs) in building livable cities. However, the PLSs provision is always inappropriately distributed over space in urban cities, leading to the inequities that some residents have overwhelmingly superior access to PLSs but another are in considerably restricted proximity of PLSs. In this context, examining the inequalities in PLSs provision should provide critical management implications. This paper examines the PLSs provision in association with neighborhood sociodemographics in Shenzhen, China. A set of mixed indicators is developed to measure the PLSs provision in an integrated manner (physical amount, spatial extent, and accessibility), and 19 variables in total are used to describe neighborhood sociodemographics. Principle component analysis (PCA) is employed to produce the neighborhood sociodemographic profiles of PLSs provision. PCA generates four categories of neighborhood sociodemographic profiles in relation to PLSs provision: the socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhood of lower PLSs amount, the educationally disadvantaged neighborhood of lower PLSs accessibility, the housing disadvantaged neighborhood of higher PLSs fragmentation, and the occupationally advantaged neighborhood of greater PLSs intact. In space, the disadvantaged neighborhoods of PLSs provision are generally located in the outskirts. The findings evidence the significant inequalities of PLSs provision in physical amount, accessibility and spatial extent. Our study highlights the promising potential of PCA in assisting urban managers and planners to better the PLSs provision patterns.