A Multi-Source Data-Based Case Study on the Impact of Environmental Quality Differences on Diurnal-Nocturnal Recreational Vitality of Urban Parks

Within smart urbanism, green spaces and parks in the city are important factors to improve the urban environment and citizen's quality of life. In the past, urban parks had functions of environmental conservation, citizen recreation and/or identity (memorials), and they were usually planned for, funded and maintained by local governments. Increasingly, however, urban parks are subject to changes in meaning, identity, functions and governance, liked to urban regeneration, climate change adaptation and mitigation and wider sustainability goals. Thus, this article discusses from a transition perspective 'how the social-ecological system of urban district parks in Seoul Metropolitan Area has fundamentally changed in the past decade.' It examines how innovations in local green space provision have emerged, and how these have triggered shifts in the relations between local government, civil society organizations, private businesses and citizens. It analyzes how different social needs and objectives, including education, improved health and physical recreation, food provision and community building, have provided new domains of interaction in this. It also recognizes the related shifts in urban ecosystems, infrastructures, regulation and society, fostering a wider awareness of climate change and urban regeneration issues, while also enhancing local quality of life through ecological place making for citizens. From this research, we will identify the key drivers and barriers of the observed transition, and suggest how cities should consider these in their planning for sustainable urban regeneration.

Taking Xihu Park, Zuohai Park, Jinjishan Park, and Jinniushan Park in Fuzhou as the research objects, the dark sky environment of Fuzhou urban parks was investigated by using an Unihedron Sky Quality Meter for field measurements and collect data. The following results were obtained. (1) The dark sky environment of Fuzhou urban parks was poor and worsened with time. (2) The magnitude of the brightness of Fuzhou urban parks decreased with decreasing measurement angle, with the highest brightness of zenith being associated with the best dark sky environment quality. (3) The zenith-equivalent brightness value of urban parks in Fuzhou was greatly affected by the light environment of the night sky layer, the range of 15°–45° was greatly affected by the light environment near the urban park canopy, and the internal differentiation was not significant. (4) Artificial lighting in parks causes light pollution in urban park areas. Elements such as artificial lighting, building facades, and large trees in the areas surrounding the parks also affected the quality of the dark sky environment of urban parks. Finally, corresponding recommendations are proposed to guide the planning and design of the nighttime light environment in urban parks and to provide a reference for a system of collecting field measurements and evaluating the dark sky environment of urban parks.

Coexistence Perspectives: Exploring the impact of landscape features on aesthetic and recreational values in urban parks

Urban parks can maintain minimal resilience for Neotropical bird communities

Urban parks are vital places for the protection of urban biodiversity and the environment, and their design and ethos are also relevant to the quality of life and human well-being in urban areas. With the development of cities and the improvement of the living standards of the people, some existing parks and open spaces have been unable to meet people's various needs for urban living environment, so the redesign and renovation of urban parks and open spaces has become a topical issue in the fields of architecture and urban planning. This study selected an urban pocket park in Sydney, Australia, as a case to explore a new approach to designing urban spaces – introducing biophilic concepts to address practical development needs. The case study also demonstrates the great potential and possibilities of biophilic concepts in improving the quality and appropriateness of urban spaces and environments. In addition, this study attempts to integrate the biophilic concept with the design and renovation of existing urban pocket parks and explore the characteristics and feasibility of the concept in terms of different functional areas and details. The significance of this study is not only to test the possibility of combining biophilic theory with urban spatial planning principles, but also to provide practical experience and suggestions for future construction and development of designs that are dominated or inspired by natural elements.

Application of GPS tracking for understanding recreational flows within urban park

Development of a measurement scale for residents’ attitudes toward leisure activities in urban parks

Well-designed of an urban park is one of the best ways to achieve the city sustainable development and contributes to the quality of life in many ways. Central to this argument is the claim that the variables need to be considered and thus, this research was conducted to assess the quality of urban park by empirically evaluating through behavioral competencies and psychological well-being from the model of Lawton’s Quality of Life. A quantitative research method was employed for the research with 134 respondents in Taman Lembah Bukit SUK, Shah Alam. Results confirm that the urban park provides the potential for psychological well-being and behavioral competencies equally among male and female in improving their quality of life.

Social carrying capacity and emotion dynamics in urban national parks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dog walkers’ vs. other park visitors’ perceptions: The importance of planning sustainable urban parks in Bucharest, Romania

Analysis of urban wetland park cooling effects and their potential influence factors: Evidence from 477 urban wetland parks in China

Urban forests, crucial to urban ecosystems, are increasingly threatened by the challenges of urbanization, such as deteriorating thermal environments and declining air quality. Despite their recognized benefits to city dwellers’ quality of life, a systematic understanding of the impact of these environmental factors on public psychophysiological well-being in recreational sites is a notable gap in the literature. The objective of this research was to bridge this gap by examining the effects of the thermal environment and air quality in urban forests on the public’s perception, offering scientific evidence to inform environmental optimization and health management strategies for urban parks, essential for sustainable urban development and public health. Three urban parks in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, namely Fuzhou National Forest Park, Xihu Park, and Jinniushan Sports Park, were selected as research sites. Environmental monitoring and questionnaire surveys were conducted at 24 recreation places from October to December 2020, collecting temperature, humidity, and wind speed; the atmospheric composition includes PM2.5, PM10, negative oxygen ion, and psychophysiological data from the public. Multivariate statistical methods were employed to assess the environmental characteristics of different recreation places types and their impact on public health. The findings reveal that environmental factors explained 1.9% to 11.8% of the variation in physiological and psychological responses, mainly influenced by temperature, wind speed, and negative oxygen ions. Forests and waterfront recreation places significantly outperform canopy and open recreation places in promoting mental invigoration, stress relief, emotional tranquility, and attention restoration. Environmental monitoring results indicate that favorable meteorological conditions and good air quality are crucial for enhancing the service functions of recreation places. Notably, the positive correlation between a negative air ion concentration and psychological well-being provides a novel perspective on understanding the health benefits of urban forests. The thermal environment and air quality of urban recreation places exert a significant influence on the psychophysiological status of the public. Increasing green coverage, improving water body environments, and rationally planning recreation places layout are of great theoretical and practical significance for enhancing the environmental quality and service functions of urban forests.

The negligence of adequate planning and development of urban public parks in Nigeria is a huge setback to cities achieving maximum utilization in their social, economic, physical, and environmental sectors. This is coupled with many other managerial problems in maintaining the few available ones; and as such it has led to the gradual decay of the nation’s public parks in urban centres and, hence reduced their benefit to the built environment. The garden has become a part of our daily lives. It has become increasingly important since the 18th and 19th centuries. Parks in the city have begun to be abandoned and city dwellers are more comfortable spending their time in the countryside away from the hustle and bustle of the city. However, since the end of the 20th century, urban residents have begun to realize the importance of urban parks in their daily lives. They have begun to realize the importance of a quality environment and life. To meet these changing needs and wants, it is important to re-evaluate the construction of our city's public parks by looking at their true function in meeting the needs of life, environment, and socio-culture of the users. An open-ended questionnaire administered with twenty-one participants (regular users of public urban parks), reviews the literature on the general need for developing urban parks in Nigeria and critically examines the planning, development designs, and the important facilities and management procedures for urban parks. The result of this study will ensure dignity and remove the intrigues attracted to implementing urban renewal and regional planning programs and it will ensure the sustainability of every urban park project in Nigeria. These benefits include general beauty, healthy lifestyles, increased leisure activities, communal interaction and preservation of natural systems, and maximizing abandoned land spaces.

Anthropized green zones in urban areas and their surroundings develop complex soundscapes, characterized by the presence of multiple sound sources. This makes the interpretation of the sound environment challenging. To accurately distinguish between different sound components, a combination of selective analysis techniques is necessary. Urban parks are significant and interesting examples, where the interaction between anthropogenic and biophonic sound sources persists over broad temporal and spatial scales, making them important sites for evaluating local soundscape quality. In this work, we suggest that a transfer entropy measure (TEM) may more efficiently disentangle relevant information than traditional eco-acoustic indices. The two study areas were Parco Nord in Milan, Italy, and Ticino River Park, also in Italy. For Parco Nord, we used 3.5-h (1-min interval) recordings taken over an area of about 20 hectares, employing 16 sensors. For the Ticino River Park, we used 5-day (1 min plus 5 min pause) recordings taken over an area of approximately 10 hectares, using a smaller set of eight sensors. We calculated the classical eco-acoustic indices and selected two of them: the acoustic entropy (H) and the bio-acoustic index (BI), calculated for all sites with a 1 min time resolution obtained after a principal components analysis. For these time series, we studied the TEM of all sites in both directions, i.e., from one site to another and vice-versa, resulting in asymmetric transfer entropies depending on the location and period of the day. The results suggest the existence of a network of interconnections among sites characterized by strong bio-phonic activity, whereas the interconnection network is damped at sites close to sources of traffic noise. The TEM seems to be independent of the choice of eco-acoustic index time series, and therefore can be considered a robust index of sound quality in urban and wild park environments, providing additional structural insights complementing the traditional approach based on eco-acoustic indices. Specifically, TEM provides directional information about intersite sound connectivity in the area of study, enabling a nuanced understanding of the sound flows across varying anthropogenic and natural sound sources, which is not available using conventional methods.

In industrializing and urbanizing countries such as Malaysia, urban parks play an increasingly important role in contributing to the quality of urban life and environment. The main aim of this study is to evaluate the effective characteristics of an urban park and the implementation of park management by the private organization at KLCC Park towards increasing the value of life for people living in the city. The objective of this study is to gain an insight into visitors’ perception of the effectiveness of the KLCC Park and an overview of the park management by KLCC Park. This study used a mixed methodology approach. This research used questionnaires as the instrument to record respondents’ perspectives and conducted an interview with a key manager of KLCC Park Management. There were 320 respondents who participated in this study. The study involved a comprehensive literature research on the criteria of urban park effectiveness, passive engagement opportunities and active engagement opportunities, accessibility and safety. The benefits received by the visitors play an important role towards the effectiveness of the place. The results of the study indicate that urban park is receiving increasing attention from visitors, but that planning and management are still not optimal. The finding in term of planning and management of the park can conclude that urban planners and green space managers need to ensure that green spaces meet the demands and preferences of visitors and institutional structures are important for sound green space planning and management. Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) Park, offers a calm and harmonious environment in the midst of the hustle and bustle of a busy and dynamic city and dissipating the tensions of city living. It was concluded that the criteria of comfort felt by the visitors were very important to the assessment of an effective urban park. Keywords: Urban Park, effective criteria of urban park, benefits of urban park, urban park planning and management.