Ergen, Mustafa2024-12-242024-12-2420211618-86671610-8167https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2021.127160https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12604/6797The problem of how to ensure the accessibility of green areas is a significant issue for urban planners and leaders. Every segment of society should have access to green areas. The 2015 United Nations General Assembly Resolution indicated the necessity of ensuring that children, older adults, and disabled people have equal access to green areas. The Accessible Natural Greenspace Standard (ANGSt) was implemented in England in response to the United Nations 2015 Resolution. ANGSt states that housing developments needed to have a green space within 300 m in order to be identified as having adequate access to green space. Almost at the same time, Turkey has also identified increasing access to urban green spaces as a priority, which can be seen most directly in the 2014 Turkish Regulation on Spatial Planning. This document states that housing zones need to have a green space within 500 m to ensure that urban residents have sufficient access to green space. However, no specific suggestions or procedures have been provided on how to measure the accessibility of a city's green areas. To fill this gap, this study developed a method for measuring the accessibility of green areas according to the standards outlined in the 2014 Turkish Regulation on Spatial Planning as well as the standards described in England's ANGSt regulations. The accessibility of green areas in Nevs & cedil;ehir, Turkey was assessed using this method to demonstrate its utility. The method of Comber et al. (2008) and the grid method used in the GEOSTAT procedure were adapted for this study to assess the accessibility of green areas in Nevs & cedil;ehir, Turkey. In order to conduct this study, ArcGIS was used and analyses were performed grid method. As a result, this study identified housing zones that do not have access to a green space, both according to Turkish standards as well as English standards. Furthermore, this study also identified many green spaces that are not within an accessible distance from residential areas, indicating that a significant proportion of Nevs & cedil;ehir's green spaces are being under-utilized. This study reveals that thus far, the planning approaches used in Nevs & cedil;ehir have not taken access to green spaces into consideration, particularly along the city's borders. The center of the city has much more access to green areas, but it has the inverse problem of having green spaces that lack nearby residential areas, so they are not adequately utilized. This situation most likely arose due to reliance on the grid meter per capita standard for assessing green space rather than basing planning decisions on accessibility standards. Thus, this study provides important insights into Nevs & cedil;ehir's current land use distribution that can be used to shape the future of urban planning in Nevs & cedil;ehir, while also providing a method for assessing land use distribution that can be used in a wide range of contexts to evaluate access to green spaces.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccessEnvironmental justiceGreen areas accessibilityQuality of lifeSocial equityUrban developmentArticle62Q1WOS:000659037600002Q12-s2.0-8510583101910.1016/j.ufug.2021.127160