Newest papers

Choose your own adventure: How data source selection shapes urban accessibility analyses

Geoff Boeing, Jiyoon Kim, Daniele Simon-Thompson, Jaehyun Ha, Ruoyu Chen · 2026 · Journal of Transport Geography

DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2026.104841 · cited by 0 works (OpenAlex) · open-access PDF

French

L’accessibilité des parcs urbains façonne la santé mentale, le bien-être physique et la cohésion communautaire. La mesure est donc centrale à la planification urbaine et paysagère. Bien que les chercheurs aient débattu de l’impact des différentes mesures d’accessibilité sur les résultats de l’analyse, peu d’attention a été accordée à la variabilité de la sélection des sources de données. Les résultats des analyses d’accessibilité varient-ils en fonction de l’ensemble de données utilisé pour définir les emplacements et les attributs des parcs? Nous comparons quatre sources de données géospatiales largement utilisées – OpenStreetMap, Esri, SafeGraph et The Trust for Public Land – en validant leurs données et en mesurant l’

Machine translation (Meta M2M100); the English original follows.

Abstract

Urban park accessibility shapes mental health, physical well-being, and community cohesion. Measuring it is thus central to urban and landscape planning. Although researchers have debated the impacts of different accessibility measures on analysis results, scant attention has been paid to variability from data source selection. Do the results of accessibility analyses vary depending on the dataset used to define park locations and attributes? We compare four widely used geospatial data sources – OpenStreetMap, Esri, SafeGraph, and The Trust for Public Land – by validating their data and measuring park access across two cities. These datasets purport to cover the same spatial features, but our findings reveal wide discrepancies in accessibility results, driven by differences in dataset completeness, coverage, and accuracy between the sources. We provide guidelines for selecting and carefully validating data for accessibility analyses, as these decisions directly impact the accuracy and equity of downstream urban park planning and decision-making.

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Topics: Geospatial analysis, Geocoding, Geography, Land cover, Land use, Computer science

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