Abstract
Urban parks are essential parts of a city’s natural environment, and blue spaces of urban parks bring aesthetic and health benefits to people. However, the current blue spaces mainly focus on the marine environment or a giant water body scale at the urban or regional level. The urban park blue spaces (e.g., rivers, creeks, ponds) are relatively neglected. An experiment involving 10 different urban park blue spaces in Huanhuaxi park was conducted to assess urban park blue spaces’ aesthetic preference and restorative potential. The results indicated that (1) a water body with good water quality and natural visual form may be more attractive and have restorative potential; (2) blue spaces with high vegetation diversity are preferred, and artificial elements should be evaluated more carefully when added to the scene to avoid disharmony and conflict with the surrounding environment; (3) in practical design, the proportions of plants, buildings, topographical changes, and water should be coordinated to maintain the blue space’s landscape heterogeneity; (4) more leisure activities and interactions should be considered for better recovery; and (5) designers need to emphasize the balance of natural and man-made elements to enhance the visual quality of the water feature. This investigation is important for the management and development of leisure and natural resources in urban parks.
Highlights
People living in dense city areas are regularly exposed to stimuli that can cause mental fatigue [1] and are moving away from natural environments
The female participants were slightly higher in number than males (43 men and 50 women), and the ages were mainly distributed between 23 and 26 years (24.73 ± 4.09), which accounted for more than half of the total number of participants
Blue spaces with high vegetation diversity are preferred, and artificial elements should be evaluated more carefully when added to the scene to avoid disharmony and conflict with the surrounding environment
Summary
People living in dense city areas are regularly exposed to stimuli that can cause mental fatigue [1] and are moving away from natural environments. Two broad categorizations of environment (i.e., green space and blue space) have received acclaim for restorative wellbeing in urban areas [3]. The restorative potential of blue space is evident [3,4,5,6,7]. Blue space was regarded as a part of green space in previous studies [8,9]. With increasing attention to blue space as a restorative environment, blue space is no longer regarded as a by-product of green spaces [10]. A previous study showed that different freshwater types might have different potentials for reducing and restoring stress. More efforts should explore different kinds of blue spaces’ restorative potential to promote the study of healthy places and therapeutic landscapes
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