Abstract
Public urban green spaces play an important role in urban sustainability. These places should provide high-quality recreation experiences for the urban residents. However, they are often overused. The Wienerberg area in the south of Vienna, Austria, was transformed from a waste disposal site into a natural recreation area. During the past years, intensive settlement densification processes have taken place, resulting in a doubling of the local population living within a few minutes walking distance. An on-site survey among green space visitors (N = 231) revealed that the majority of them considered the area to be overcrowded on Sundays/holidays and reported a perceived increase in visitor numbers during the past years. Visitors with more past experience, as well as those who have perceived an increase in visitor numbers during recent years, reported higher crowding perceptions. A significant proportion of them try to avoid these crowds, relying on behavioral coping strategies, such as inter-area displacement. While urban regeneration has provided an attractive recreation area, urban densification around the green space appears to have reduced its recreational quality. Monitoring recreation quality indicators, such as crowding perceptions, seems to be useful for sustainable urban green space management and city planning.
Highlights
Public urban green spaces are seen as an integral part of sustainable city development [1,2]
While sustainable city and green space planning is often concerned with green space provision and access [3,4], measuring the perceived recreation quality of urban green spaces is rarely carried out
Visitors with a higher level of past experience, who had used the area frequently over many years, were more likely to perceive an increase in visitor numbers and degradation in their recreation quality
Summary
Public urban green spaces are seen as an integral part of sustainable city development [1,2]. Green spaces support biodiversity and provide many ecosystem services for urban dwellers. They increase the attractiveness of the urban settlement environment, offer relaxation, restoration, stress reduction, escape from the city and provide sites for social interaction [3,4,5]. These areas are often heavily used and the resulting crowding can degrade the quality of the recreation experience [6,7]. Knowledge of recreation quality indicators, such as crowding perceptions, coping behaviors in response to crowding and visitor satisfaction, provides useful information for sustainable urban green space management in dealing with the social carrying capacity of green spaces [9,10]
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