The distribution of urban public services: the case of parks and recreational services in Ankara

The provision of urban services is a central issue in urban planning and development. The distribution of these services to guarantee their effective utilization is another focus of concern. As citizens are heterogeneous in character, their access to urban public services is affected by the distribution of those services. Access to some services with fixed facilities is limited by the location of the service within a city. In this study, which focuses on the city of Ankara, Turkey, the parks and recreational facilities are evaluated in terms of both service and user characteristics. Since the service has a merited reputation due to the public and its free provision, a local government aiming for a just distribution claims to distribute the service ‘equally’ on a geographical basis. This study evaluates the current policy and proposes distributional justice to achieve a truly equitable distribution, which is sensitive to the characteristics of different citizen groups, instead of the territorial justice (i.e. park distribution based on geography) that cannot satisfy the conditions of effective utilization.