The Use of Urban Parks

Abstract

Urban parks are a significant feature of the urban environment and constitute a significant budget commitment on the part of local councils and some state governments, but they are relatively neglected, and often ignored, in mainstream leisure studies. This paper examines two themes in existing urban parks research, namely the ‘non-use and decline’ theme and the theme of equity. The review concludes that the ‘accepted wisdom’ on non-use and decline of urban parks is questionable and contrary to available empirical evidence and that leisure studies discourses which ignore urban parks as a leisure sector give a distorted view of the equity outcomes of public leisure services as measured by patterns of usage. The paper presents data from recent surveys of park use in Sydney, Australia, which indicate that visiting urban parks is the most popular of all out-of-home leisure activities and, unlike a number of other public leisure services, urban parks attract high levels of use from virtually all sections of the community.