Natural or artificial? Exploring perceived restoration potential of community parks in Winter city

Abstract

Urban community parks, as widely distributed and frequently used small public urban green spaces, play an essential role in meeting the growing needs of residents for recovery. However, previous studies focus on the restorative benefits of nature and have rarely measured the restoration of winter scenes and artificial scenes. This paper selects a typical small community park in the winter city of China and studies how landscape elements affect restorative benefits through the setting of seasonal virtual scenes. Respondents were asked to rate natural, dynamic and seasonal virtual scenes in terms of sense of being away, extent, fascination, compatibility, and restorative potential. The results show plants with rich layers and large coverage areas have a significant positive impact on human perception of recovery, vitality facilities have no significant impact on perceived recovery, and the number of active people has a significant negative impact on perceived recovery. The plant landscape in winter and summer has the same effect on attention recovery, and seasonally induced changes in plant vision can enhance restorative benefits.