2022 / COVID, Equity and Access, Green spaces, Urban

Inequitable Changes to Time Spent in Urban Nature During COVID-19: A Case Study of Seattle, WA with Asian, Black, Latino, and White Residents

Citation

Nay, A., Kahn Jr, P. H., Lawler, J. J., & Bratman, G. N. (2022). Inequitable Changes to Time Spent in Urban Nature during COVID-19: A Case Study of Seattle, WA with Asian, Black, Latino, and White Residents. Land, 11(8), 1277. doi.org/10.3390/land11081277

Link to file

The COVID-19 pandemic affected everyone in cities, but not equally. In the United States, many of the pandemic’s negative impacts hit People of Color harder than their white neighbors. This study looked at whether that pattern showed up in something specific: how people interacted with urban nature, like parks and green spaces.

Using Seattle, Washington as a case study, researchers surveyed 300 residents using a 48-question survey. The group was evenly split across four racial and ethnic groups: Asian, Black and African American, Latino/a/x, and white.

The results revealed a clear divide. In the six months after the pandemic began, Black and Latino residents lost significant amounts of time spent in urban nature. Asian and White residents did not.

So what was driving that loss? The researchers tested a range of possible factors, including feelings of exclusion — a theme that comes up often in existing research on who feels welcome in natural spaces. And that’s exactly what they found: the drop in time spent outdoors among Black and Latino residents appeared to be linked to a sense that they didn’t belong in urban nature.

These findings matter beyond Seattle. They point to a deeper inequity: if urban nature can help buffer people from the worst effects of a crisis like a pandemic, then unequal access means unequal protection. The study offers recommendations for how government agencies can promote fairer access to urban nature — both during public health emergencies and in everyday life. And the lessons reach well beyond the U.S., adding to the global conversation about inequity and access to nature during COVID-19.

Abstract

Figure 1. Change to average frequency of urban nature interaction among each racial/ethnic group

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone in urban areas. Some of these impacts in the United States have negatively affected People of Color more than their White counterparts. Using Seattle, Washington as a case study, we investigated whether inequitable effects appear in residents’ interactions with urban nature (such as urban green space). Using a 48-question instrument, 300 residents were surveyed, equally divided across four racial/ethnic groups: Asian, Black and African American, Latino/a/x, and White. Results showed that during the span of about 6 months after the onset of the pandemic, Black and Latino residents experienced a significant loss of time in urban nature, while Asian and White residents did not. The implications of these findings, including inequities in the potential buffering effects of urban nature against COVID-19 and the future of urban nature conservation, are discussed. Multiple variables were tested for association with the changes to time spent in urban nature, including themes of exclusion from urban nature spaces found throughout the existing literature. Findings show that decreases in time spent in urban nature among Black and Latino residents may be associated with their feeling as though they did not belong in urban nature. We provide recommendations based on these findings for how government agencies can promote more equitable access to urban nature during the pandemic and beyond. The results of this study have implications that extend beyond the US and are relevant to the international scholarly literature of inequities and urban nature interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.