Kai Ying Lau
As a planner and spatial analyst with Sasaki Strategies, Kai Ying Lau works to bring a spatial and data-driven approach to planning strategies by working together with planners to generate solutions that reflect the local context and community priorities.
Sessions
Across urbanized areas in the US, who are the communities being served by parks, and who is left out? In park system planning, the traditional measure of equitable access to parks has been the 10-minute walk isochrone, determining what percentage of residents live within a short walk of a park. However, these metrics do not capture inequities in park access for different demographic groups, nor do they consider the quality of parks that communities have access to. This research project explored a methodology to layer in considerations of park size, population density, and demographic characteristics to allow a more nuanced look at the equity of park access in urbanized areas across the United States. PyQGIS and Rgeoda are two open source platforms used for this analysis to allow for localized analysis at the national scale, as well as to make this analysis available to cities, towns, and other researchers interested in parks equity.