Abstract
We analysed observations from 31 neighbourhood parks, with each park mapped into smaller target areas for study, across five US cities generated using the System for Observing Play and Recreation in the Community (SOPARC). In areas where at least two people were observed, less than one-third (31.6%) were populated with at least one white and one non-white person. Park areas that were supervised, had one or more people engaged in vigorous activity, had at least one male and one female present, and had one or more teens present were significantly more likely to involve interracial groups (p<0.01 for each association). Observations in parks located in interracial neighbourhoods were also more likely to involve interracial groups (p<0.05). Neighbourhood poverty rate had a significant and negative relationship with the presence of interracial groups, particularly in neighbourhoods that are predominantly non-white. Additional research is needed to confirm the impact of these interactions. Urban planning and public health practitioners should consider the health benefits of interracial contact in the design and programming of neighbourhood parks.
Highlights
Urban parks have held a prominent place in city planning, landscape architecture, and public health scholarship for well over a century (Cranz, 1982; Wheater et al, 2007)
Building from the concept of psychosocial health, this paper considers the role of parks in bringing people together across racial/ethnic groups and, potentially facilitating interracial contact as an important and underappreciated pathway to increasing social cohesion, reducing racial prejudice, and improving human health
Before describing data collection and analysis methods, we review literature from four distinct areas of scholarship that together create the conceptual and methodological foundation for our research: (1) urban planning and landscape architecture’s history of promoting urban parks as democratic public spaces that foster cohesion between groups of different socio-economic and ethnic background; (2) research on social interaction, social cohesion, and intergroup contact in public spaces and green spaces within leisure studies and environmental and social psychology; (3) public health research on chronic exposure to prejudice and institutional racism as primary contributors to racial health disparities; and (4) recent public health research utilizing systematic social observations and environmental audits of outdoor public spaces including neighbourhood parks
Summary
Urban parks have held a prominent place in city planning, landscape architecture, and public health scholarship for well over a century (Cranz, 1982; Wheater et al, 2007). Urban Planning, 2016, Volume 1, Issue 4, Pages 51–64 whereby green space in cities may promote public health: stress reduction, increased physical activity, improved air quality, and social cohesion (Hartig, Mitchell, de Vries, & Frumkin, 2014). As the world undergoes a third major period of urbanization (Angel, 2011), local governments are adopting new types of parks and green space strategies. This includes creation of rail trails and greenways, retrofitting landfills, cemeteries, rooftops, and parking areas, covering highways and reservoirs, sharing schoolyards, closing roads, and creating urban farms and community gardens (Harnik, 2010). Olmsted believed that parks would promote democratic values and social life by bringing together diverse people, “each individual adding by his mere presence to the pleasure of all others” (Olmsted, 1870)
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