Urban Park Design Research Articles

Developing Design Criteria for Sustainable Urban Parks

This study investigates how urban parks can contribute to helping cities become more sustainable through developing a set of criteria for the sustainable design of urban parks. Today, there is no example around the world where all the proposed sustainable design criteria are applied together in a specific urban park. In this context, this study aims to make a novel contribution by systematically reviewing the literature on the sustainable design of urban parks. In the light of research findings, this study contributes to the implementation of a comprehensive sustainable park design practice in our cities in the future. These design criteria may further serve as performance indicators to offer information and know-how to local authorities, practitioners, communities, and other actors in this field to help them assess their success levels and progress over time.

The planning and design of good quality urban parks in China: the perspectives of technical professionals

ABSTRACT Previous studies have identified barriers to investment in good quality urban parks during the planning and design stage, particularly noting the ineffectiveness of planning instruments, a low political will to invest in urban green spaces and constraints in governance operation. The factors that influence the quality of urban parks in the planning and design stages of investment were investigated through interviews with technical professionals who have acted as consultants to local government across China on urban planning and landscape projects. A set of thematic characteristics were identified as shaping the planning and design of good quality urban parks in China: the reliance on quantitative metrics in the contemporary planning context; the linkage between local political will to invest in urban parks, local leaders’ prestige and local administrators’ enthusiasm in governance operation; and local administrators’ equipment with knowledge and effectiveness in communicating with technical professionals.

A trade-off method through connectivity analysis applied for sustainable design and planning of large urban parks

ABSTRACT Unlike urban planning processes have actively used empirical approaches, the urban park design and planning still uses the conceptual research approach; therefore, discrepancies often arise between the designer’s intention and real phenomena. In this work, we examine and propose a trade-off method for sustainable urban park design and planning that integrates conceptual and connectivity analyses, specifically for the Yongsan Park master plan. Yongsan Park is a mega-scale urban park project with a unique history as being a military post-industrial site for a long time. To re-link the isolated park site to current urban context, the park connectivity requires careful consideration both conceptually and empirically during the design and planning process. We used the spatial network analysis and statistical methods to investigate the potential visitation proposed by the park master plan and to understand the correlations with built environment factors. The results indicate that an iterative process is needed between conceptual design ideas and empirical connectivity analyses to properly reflect the designers’ intent and improve the long-term outcomes of large urban park design and planning. The trade-off method also provides insights of the urban planning strategies for nearby neighborhoods to enhance park connectivity and potentially contribute to the park management phase.

Security and urban satisfaction: developing a model based on safe urban park design components extracted from users' preferences

Security and urban satisfaction: developing a model based on safe urban park design components extracted from users' preferences

Spatiotemporal fluctuations in urban park spatial vitality determined by on-site observation and behavior mapping: A case study of three parks in Zhengzhou City, China

Community parks provide urban residents with open spaces for daily recreation and physical fitness activities. This study aims to investigate visitor activity patterns in urban parks and the relationship between urban park features and spatial vitality through the field observation of three community parks in the old town area of Zhengzhou City. Spatial vitality refers to the inclusiveness, aggregation density, and use intensity of urban park space, which is quantified by the weighted average of four indicators (diversity of age group, visitor density, space using intensity and richness of activity types). A questionnaire survey was used to determine the key factors associated with park spatial vitality and visitors’ needs in the park space. The results showed that the spatial vitality of each park varies across time and space; in addition, spatial vitality was influenced by the location of and the facilities in the park. The overall number of visitors of the parks was significantly higher on weekends than on weekdays, with the peak times of vitality being 10:00 am and 4:00 pm during the day. The results also revealed that children, middle-aged adults, and the elderly were the primary users of the community parks, and spatial preferences differed by age group. Moreover, certain locations (sandpits, squares, watersides, and kiosks for painting activities) and sites with more service facilities inside the parks had a higher spatial vitality. Furthermore, the spatial vitality of the park was not directly proportional to its size and visitor number. To increase urban park vitality, factors that need to be considered include location and size of park, demographic structure of the surrounding population, the facilities in the park, and open lawn space. In a high-density urban area, smaller parks must be planned to improve the service efficiency of urban parks. The results of this study can provide a reference point for urban park planning and design.

A Study on the Relationships between Plant Landscape, Landscape Preference and Anxiety Relief in Urban Parks Focusing on Busan Citizen Park

현대 사회의 신속한 발전은 사람들의 생활과 업무에 많은 편리함을 주는 반면 불안감, 우울감 등 엄중한 정신적인 문제들을 유발하고 있다. 도시공원은 도시의 가장 주요한 자연경관으로써 사람들이 휴식을 취하고 편안한 활동을 진행할 수 있는, 활용빈도가 비교적 높은 녹색공간이다. 도시공원의 가장 중요한 디자인 요소인 식물은 도시공원의 자연도를 나타내는 물질적 체재이다. 식물디자인을 통해 형성된 식물경관은 사람들의 정서안정, 신체 및 심리적 건강에 매우 유익하다. 본 연구는 환경심리학과 경관디자인학에 입각하여 도시공원의 가장 대표적인 디자인 요소인 식물을 둘러싸고 경관선호도 및 불안감 해소에 대한 식물경관의 자연도 영향관계에 대해 분석하는 것을 목적으로 하였다. 부산시민공원의 식물경관을 연구대상으로 하였고 설문조사를 진행하여 최종적으로 313부의 유효설문지를 회수하였다. SPSS 23.0 프로그램을 활용하여 회귀분석하였으며 그 결과는 다음과 같다. (1) 도시공원 식물경관의 자연도는 경관선호도의 응집성, 복잡성, 신비성, 가독성에 유의미한 정방향(+)의 영향을 미친다. (2) 도시공원 식물경관의 자연도는 불안감 해소에 유의미한 정방향(+)의 영향을 미친다. (3) 도시공원에서 경관선호도의 응집성, 복잡성, 신비성, 가독성은 불안감 해소에 유의미한 정방향(+)의 영향을 미친다. 이외에도 회귀계수 비교결과, 불안감 해소에 대해 경관선호도의 복잡성의 영향이 가장 큰 것으로 나타났고 그 다음으로 신비성, 가독성, 응집성의 순서로 나타났다. 연구결과를 기초로 하여 도시공원의 식물경관 디자인에 대해 제안하였으며 이를 통해 도시공원이 경관품질과 시각적 미감을 제고하고 불안감 해소에 현저한 효과를 이루는 도시공원 경관을 조성할 것을 기대한다. 본 연구는 도시공원 및 그 식물경관의 디자인 발전을 촉진할 뿐만 아니라 사람들의 불안감 해소, 신체 및 심리적 건강을 촉진하는데 이론적 참고를 제공할 수 있다. 특히 현재 COVID-19의 영향 아래 도시공원 및 그 식물경관은 사람들의 신체 및 심리적 건강을 회복하는데 매우 중요한 연구의의를 가진다.The rapid development of modern society brings a lot of convenience to people s life and work, but it also leads to more and more serious mental problems, such as anxiety and depression. Urban parks are not only the most important natural landscapes in the cities, but also green spaces with high frequency of recreation and relaxation activities. Plants are not only the most important design elements in urban parks, but also the material carriers that reflect the naturalness of urban parks. The plant landscapes designed by plants are very beneficial to people s emotional stability and mental health. On the basis of environmental psychology and landscape design, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of plant landscapes naturalness on landscape preference and anxiety relief through plants which are representative design elements in urban parks. Taking the plant landscapes of Busan Citizen Park as the research objects, a questionnaire survey was conducted, and 313 valid questionnaires were obtained. Using SPSS23.0 software for regression analysis, the results showed that: (1) The naturalness of plant landscapes in urban parks has a significant positive impact on the coherence, complexity, mystery and legibility of landscape preference. (2) The naturalness of plant landscapes in urban parks has a significant positive impact on anxiety relief. (3) The coherence, complexity, mystery and legibility of landscape preference in urban parks have significant positive impacts on anxiety relief. In addition, the comparison of the size of the regression coefficient showed that the complexity of landscape preference has the greatest impact on anxiety relief, followed by mystery, legibility and coherence. Based on the research results, this paper puts forward some suggestions on the design of the plant landscapes of urban parks, looking forward to improve the landscape quality and visual beauty of urban parks, and to create landscapes of urban parks with obvious effect on anxiety relief. This study can not only promote the development of the design of urban parks and their plant landscapes, but also provide theoretical references for people s anxiety relief and improve people s physical and mental health. Especially in the background of today s COVID-19 epidemic, urban parks and their plant landscapes are of great research significance to the recovery of human physical and mental health.

The Effects of Artificial Lake Space on Satisfaction and Restorativeness of the Overall Environment and Soundscape in Urban Parks

Several studies have proven that soundscape in blue space is conducive to human health and well-being, but few studies have explored which blue space characteristics would contribute to a better soundscape and visiting experience. Therefore, an on-site questionnaire investigation was conducted at two artificial lakes in Xi’an, China. The eight Perceived Sensory Dimensions (PSDs) as a landscape assessment tool were applied to identify the characteristics of artificial lake space in urban parks. The results showed that (1) In artificial lake space, overall environment and soundscape reached a very satisfactory level in general, while the respondents’ perceived level of overall restorativeness and soundscape restorativeness as just medium, which indicated that the quality of artificial lake space needs to be improved. (2) According to people’s perceptions, artificial lake spaces had the most obvious characteristics of prospect, social and space; serene and nature were medium; refuge, rich in species, and culture were the least. (3) The eight PSDs of artificial lake space, except for social, were positively correlated with soundscape satisfaction, overall satisfaction, soundscape restorativeness, and overall restorativeness. Moreover, among them, serene was the most significant characteristic in artificial lake space. These findings could be instructive to the design of urban parks with artificial lakes for improving users’ visiting satisfaction and restorativeness.

Effects of urban parks on residents’ expressed happiness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted human health worldwide. In these unprecedented times, the benefits of urban parks for residents have gained attention. However, few studies have explored the effects of urban parks on residents’ expressed happiness from the perspective of big data, and fewer have further deciphered the disparities between residents’ expressed happiness before and during the pandemic. In this study, we explored the effects of urban parks on residents’ happiness by including nine independent factors in baseline regression models, and chose 577 urban parks in Nanjing City, China, as study sites. Around 600,000 geotagged posts crawled on Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) were employed to obtain residents’ expressed happiness. The results demonstrated that residents with access to urban parks with higher normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) values are likely to be happier; and subdistrict-scale urban parks have the highest positive association with residents’ expressed happiness. The presence of water, relatively dense populations, low land surface temperatures, and a low proportion of impervious land in the living environment were significantly associated with the higher expressed happiness of residents. The research period was divided into before and during the pandemic, and we identified that the positive association between NDVI of urban parks and residents’ expressed happiness increased by one-half during the pandemic period compared to the overall results (0.372 vs. 0.255), indicating that the COVID-19 pandemic awakened Chinese residents’ longing for high “green quality” urban parks. Our findings can provide guidance and recommendations for health-oriented urban park planning and design.

Wuhan City Park Landscape Design Based on River Culture

Urban parks, as one of the starting points of urban green development, are a composite product of the interaction between people and nature. They play an important role in displaying and continuing the city’s culture. Therefore, it is critical to attach importance to the design and renewal of urban parks. This article takes Wuhan City Park as the specific research object, and extracts the “water”, “fish” and “bubble” in the “river culture” as landscape design elements. To show, let people feel the baptism of urban culture while visiting the park, and re-entrust the park with the mission of inheriting cultural heritage.

Effects of urban park design features on summer air temperature and humidity in compact-city milieu

Urban park patronage is intimately linked to the thermal comfort level perceived by visitors. This study quantified the effects of nine park-design and urban-landscape parameters on air temperature and relative humidity in summer by deploying 100 sensors in 14 urban parks in Hong Kong. The field data were compared with a reference weather station and analysed with multiple regression. The sampled parks were on average 0.2 °C warmer and 1.7% less humid than the reference. A notable temperature reduction (mean = 0.6 °C and max. = 4.9 °C) was only observed in the largest park in Hong Kong. The daily variations in cooling and humidifying magnitudes were strongly dependent on background temperature. The distance from sea, shrub cover, tree cover and sky view factor were significant parameters that controlled temperature and relative humidity. Mean temperature could be predicted to cool by 0.6 °C if the park was 1 km closer to the sea. For every 10% increase in shrub and tree covers, mean temperature would drop by 0.07 and 0.04 °C respectively. Larger parks with good coverage of woody vegetation should be developed to improve urban microclimate within parks and mediate the warming effect of nearby built-up areas.

Determining Factors in the Use of Urban Parks That Influence the Practice of Physical Activity in Children: A Systematic Review.

The design and/or remodelling of urban parks is a good health strategy to alleviate the lack of physical activity (PA) in children and, consequently, the different health problems derived from this. The main objective of the present study was to obtain a systematic review of the design features and characteristics that influence users’ visits to urban parks and the PA engagement in them. A literature search was carried out in the Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus databases during the months of June and July 2020. After considering and applying inclusion criteria, the final review sample was formed of 31 scientific papers published between 2010–2020. The results obtained in the review lead us to conclude that the needs of the population (children and family members who care for them) and socio-economic context of the area in which they are built must be considered when constructing and/or remodelling parks. Involving community members in playground renovations can have a positive effect on park use and PA engagement in children.

Performance Assessment Indicators for Comparing Recreational Services of Urban Parks.

Parks can offer varied services to human well-being, including recreational services (RS); however, there is insufficient understanding of park differences concerning the actual performance of their varied RS. To fill this gap, this study aimed to develop a set of performance indicators as a tool for comparing the functional efficacy of RS among different parks. The indicators covered three aspects of RS: recreational usage of various physical activities, their recreational satisfaction level and the collective performance rating. These indicators were applied in a case study of four parks in Guangzhou, China, based upon on-site observation and a questionnaire survey. The functional difference of these indicators was compared and the collective indicator was found to be able to effectively capture different efficacies of urban parks in supporting varied RS. Results show all the parks were far from reaching the maximum performance of designed RS, so it is worthy of consideration by urban managers to further improve their RS efficacy. In addition, the overall spatial design and configuration were inferred to be essential for improving the RS efficacy of urban parks, but not park size nor ornamental vegetation. The findings offered valuable evidence for the optimal spatial design and management of urban parks.

EVALUATING THE COOLING EFFECT AND THERMAL COMFORT OF SMALL URBAN GREEN SPACES ON THE CITY PEOPLE: THE CASE OF PLANNED RESIDENTIAL AREA OF UTTARA, DHAKA

Urban Green spaces explore innovative approaches to increase the quality of urban settings, enhance livability and promote sustainable lifestyles. They provide environmental benefits through their effects on negating urban heat, increase comfort and the cooling impact of surrounding area. Therefore, it is very important to understand the mechanisms by which these benefits accrue. There is, thus, a need for proper planning of urban greenery to increase the benefits sought with the needs of the community and the functionality that the urban green space will serve. In Dhaka the overall situation of urban greenery and Park greenery is in a very poor state. In this research three small parks in the planned residential area of Uttara have been selected to find out their cooling effect and the level of comfort they exert on community people. Simulation studies were also done, to check the environmental performances of the Parks and on their surroundings. The analysis identifies that these Parks have an impact, the intensity of which depends on the type and quality of its vegetation, its design parameters, connectivity and of course on surrounding urban morphology. Thus, the paper offers a planning for urban park design for planned areas of Dhaka city.

Research on the Application of Vertical Greening in Urban Park Design

The purpose of the study is to explore the design form of vertical greening in urban parks, introduce the intangible cultural heritage with strong participation, excavate the cultural connotation of the city, further explore the integration concept of traditional cultural elements and vertical greening, and inherit and continue in the design of urban parks. In the early stage, this paper summarizes the classic cases of vertical greening in foreign countries, and finds out the application scheme of the integration of traditional cultural elements in the design of domestic urban parks. The method is to refine and abstract the traditional cultural elements such as intangible cultural heritage display, folk culture and pattern symbols from the clues of local traditional cultural elements, so as to coordinate the humanities and nature to create urban characteristics. The research results are based on the local actual case, the integration of vertical greening and local cultural elements, so that the modern city park can play its own cultural value, increase the cultural function of urban park greening, enhance the city brand image of Dazhou, enhance the cultural identity of citizens, and add more green space and cultural exchange places.

Shaping Strategies of Resilience Landscapes in Urban Wetland Park

Environmental art design is a subject to deal with the relationship between artificial environment and natural environment, and also a subject to create a livable and ecological balanced living environment for human beings. Thus, it is of paramount of importance to study how artificial construction can adapt to the natural environment. To this end, the concept of physics “Resilience” is introduced into the landscape design of urban wetland park, and the strategies of shaping and utilizing resilience landscapes in urban wetland park is discussed in order to provide effective measures to deal with urban flood disaster, realize “sponge function”, promote regional ecological environment balance and sustainable development.

Microclimate in an urban park and its influencing factors: a case study of Tiantan Park in Beijing, China

Construction of urban green spaces may effectively mitigate urban heat island effect. Better design of green spaces may improve their thermal performance, and therefore provide better ecosystem services in cities. Aiming at providing empirical evidence and further insights for urban park design, field measurement of air temperature (Ta) and relative humidity (Rh) was conducted in Tiantan Park in Beijing, China. Results show that within Tiantan park, 1.29–2.71 °C air temperature difference and 1.27–5.16% relative humidity difference were observed at different time. Among all parameters, radiation condition (β = 0.872; β = 0.723) and land cover composition (β = 0.601) are dominant influencing factor on daytime and nighttime Ta respectively. Among different vegetation types, deciduous trees have significant cooling and humidifying effects at noon in summer (ρ = −0.65); evergreen trees have little effects in summer, but a humidifying effect in winter (ρ = −0.58); grassland may give rise to daytime Ta in both summer and winter (ρ = 0.48; ρ = 0.52). Effects of the shape of different vegetation types remain unclear, while more compact imperious surfaces may lead to lower daytime Ta (ρ = 0.55; ρ = 0.67). Understanding such microclimate conditions in an urban park may assist designers to create a more thermally friendly environment in future.

WITHDRAWN: Landscape design of urban theme park based on GIS system and Internet of Things

This article has been withdrawn: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been withdrawn at the request of the Editor in Chief. Subsequent to acceptance of this special issue paper by the responsible Guest Editor Sundhararajan Mahalingam, the integrity and rigor of the peer-review process was investigated and confirmed to fall beneath the high standards expected by Microprocessors & Microsystems. There are also indications that much of the Special Issue includes unoriginal and heavily paraphrased content. Due to a configuration error in the editorial system, unfortunately the Editor in Chief did not receive these papers for approval as per the journal's standard workflow.

How to quantify the cooling effect of urban parks? Linking maximum and accumulation perspectives

Urban parks can significantly alleviate the urban heat island, an ecological issue caused by urbanization. Clarifying urban park cooling effect can improve climate change adaptability and urban sustainability. However, park cooling effects were mainly explored in maximum perspective in previous studies, without considering the cumulative impact resulting from spatial continuity. Therefore, focusing on 24 urban parks in the main city zone of Shenzhen, China, such cumulative indexes as park cooling intensity and park cooling gradient, were proposed in this study and integrated with maximum indexes of park cooling area and park cooling efficiency, so as to explore park cooling effects comprehensively. The results showed that the park areas and cold spot areas of land surface temperature overlapped spatially by 64.40%. The partial correlation analysis showed that, park perimeter, area and shape index were significantly and positively correlated with park cooling area, with significantly negative correlation for park cooling efficiency. The vegetation index was significantly and positively correlated with park cooling intensity and park cooling gradient, and the impact of water body area ratio to all the four park cooling indexes was not significant. Then cooling effects of 24 urban parks were classified into four cooling capacity bundles, which showed that parks designed to serve different social functions behaved different cooling effects. The cooling effect of comprehensive parks was more efficient, with the same low value of all four cooling indexes for theme parks, high cooling intensity and cooling gradient for small ecological parks, and the highest cooling area for large ecological parks. This study proposed a comprehensive approach to measuring park cooling effects with both maximum and accumulation perspectives, which can guide urban park planning and design to maximize the ecological benefits.

Differences in Environmental Information Acquisition from Urban Green—A Case Study of Qunli National Wetland Park in Harbin, China

(1) Environmental education in an urban setting is crucial in terms of building a harmonious relationship between man and nature. As a kind of special ecological habitat, urban wetland parks provide convenience to enhance education on the natural environment. (2) In this study, we chose Harbin Qunli National Wetland Park in China as the subject, and analyzed the visual attention area with eye tracking to explore the differences in obtaining information about the natural environment in tourists with varying degrees of environmental concern and purposes of visit. A model connecting the perception preference and factors that affect visual attention of tourists was constructed. (3) Studies have shown that eco-society-hedonic tourists, who focus on parent–child activities, tend to pay more attention to wetland plants and prefer exploratory paths, while eco-hedonic tourists, whose main purposes are to relax and exercise, are more concerned about explanatory signs and enjoy flat scenic paths more. In addition, social tourists, who pay their visit for social activities, would care more about bird watching structures. (4) This research aims to assist in improving the legibility of environmental education space through the planning, design, and management of urban wetland parks, and explore the potential of landscape elements in enhancing public awareness.

Research on the convergence of Urban Pocket Park and Public Design Space Evaluation Elements

Research on the convergence of Urban Pocket Park and Public Design Space Evaluation Elements