Objective Community parks, with their wide coverage and large quantity, are suitable types of spaces for implementing the concepts of people’s city and park city; they are people’s livelihood projects close to people’s life in urban construction; they are humanistic spaces for realizing the people’s needs for a good life in low-cost and high-quality environments and for demonstrating urban quality; and they are an important carrier for enhancing the residents’ sense of access, security and happiness. Optimizing the layout of community parks from the perspective of spatial equity and efficiency is a concrete implementation and deepening of the new concepts of the times, such as community life circle and equalization of basic public services, which can effectively put into practice relevant concepts in the planning of urban parks and green spaces. By solving the problem of measuring the layout of community parks taking into account both spatial equality and efficiency, the efficient allocation and equal distribution of community parks can be realized to meet the practical needs of national territorial spatial planning. Meanwhile, as national territorial spatial planning enters the stage of fine planning and management with community living circles as units, the efficient allocation and equal distribution of community parks can satisfy the needs of quality improvement and transformation of existing community parks and restructuring of newly added ones, thus creating high-quality community living circles and improving the life quality of residents.

Methods This research expands the research perspective to incorporate both “spatial equity and efficiency”, and follows the logic of “connotation definition − measurement indicator system construction − comprehensive index calculation”. Firstly, based on the analysis unit of residential area, this research, with the support of multi-source data, constructs a measurement indicator system from the overall urban scale that can characterize the respective levels of spatial equity and spatial efficiency, and also take into account the interactive relationship between the two; secondly, the research introduces the CRITIC-entropy weighting method to analyze the indicator relationship in order to determine the weights; lastly, the research takes the central urban area of Suzhou City as the research area, and calculates the comprehensive index of the layout of community parks that take into account both spatial equity and efficiency.

Results Research results are summarized as follows. 1) The level of spatial equity and efficiency is quite poor in the central urban area of Suzhou, and the scores of spatial equity and spatial efficiency are both low; the overall balance of community park layout is better, while the supply − demand matching relationship is poorer; in essence, the overall distribution of community parks fails to match with the distribution of residents, as parks are more clustered around the research area, while residents are more concentrated in the central urban area, forming a spatial mismatch between the two. 2) The level of spatial equity and efficiency varies greatly among the municipal districts. Specifically, Gusu District has a better level, followed successively by the Industrial Park, Xiangcheng District and Wuzhong District, all of which have a worse level, and the Hi-Tech District has the worst level, with an obvious gap with other municipal districts. The formation of the differences between the municipal districts is mainly due to the different degrees of synergistic development between spatial equity and spatial efficiency, and there is a significant difference in the level of each of the two. Through the analysis of the comprehensive index and the level of spatial equity and efficiency in each municipal district, it can be found that spatial efficiency guarantees spatial equity, which is the basis of the comprehensive index, while spatial equity leads spatial efficiency, which is the key to improving the comprehensive index. 3) The measurement indicator system and methodology constructed in this research can solve the problem of correlation and conflict between spatial equity and spatial efficiency, which can characterize their respective levels and take into account the complex relationship of interdependence and conflict between them. In the process of assigning weights to the measurement indicators, the existing characteristics of the indicators and the conflict and discrete relationship between the indicators are taken into account, and the relationship between the indicators of spatial equity and spatial efficiency is coordinated, so as to achieve a comprehensive measurement of the layout of community parks that takes into account both spatial equity and efficiency.

Conclusion This research on the measurement of community park layout that takes into account both spatial equity and efficiency is aimed at expanding the research perspective of community park layout, providing indicators and methods for the scientific measurement of community park layout, assisting the regulation optimization and planning decision-making of community parks, and providing theoretical basis and support for the subsequent optimization of community park layout.