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"Parks Planning."
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What Brings Children to the Park? Analysis and Measurement of the Variables Affecting Children's Use of Parks
Problem: Children make little use of many neighborhood parks even though they have facilities for active recreation.
Purpose: We examined the factors that bring children to parks, and aimed to understand how park visitation patterns differ between boys and girls, among children of different races and ethnicities, and between inner-city and suburban children.
Methods: We surveyed children and their parents in 12 middle schools and analyzed the results. Our team also observed children at 50 inner-city and 50 suburban parks, and we used multiple regression models containing park- and neighborhood-level variables to relate them to the numbers of children using parks.
Results and conclusions: The study confirms that many middle-school children make little use of parks. This is primarily explained by their own lack of interest in the existing park activities and their households' lack of time and concerns about safety. Active recreation facilities and organized sport programs, natural features, and good levels of maintenance and cleanliness are the most significant factors attracting middle-school children to parks. Our survey found some significant gender, racial, and ethnic differences in preferences for park equipment, perceptions of park safety, and park visitation patterns. Additionally, our regression models confirmed that inner-city and suburban children were attracted to parks of different sizes and containing different facilities, and that the association between park safety and park use was also different in these two settings.
Takeaway for practice: Neighborhood parks provide the potential for active recreation, but they are often underutilized and attract only a subset of neighborhood children. Planners should take into account that different factors attract different groups of children to parks.
Research support: This research was supported by the John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation.
Journal Article
Business Park and Industrial Development Handbook
Packed with color photographs and illustrations, this handbook covers the best practices, techniques, and trends. It explains the development process step-by-step and includes 14 case study examples of new construction, adaptive use, airport-related development, and mixed office and industrial facilities
eBook
Partnerships and Community Building as Collaborative Assistance: Insights on Goal Presence, Hierarchy, and Integration from Urban Park Plans
Urban parks provide areas for human wellbeing and green space benefits in densely populated landscapes but cannot accomplish all their goals in isolation. They require assistance from collaborations to address challenges. The need for these collaborations is often codified in planning documents. We assisted Rock Creek Park (National Park Service, Washington, D.C.) in their considerations of where to place “partnerships” in their strategic plan by sourcing and summarizing goal topics, hierarchies, and relationships from peer park plans. Using textual coding and network analysis approaches, we examined strategic planning documents from park system entities across the 20 largest urban areas in the United States. We found that, topically, Rock Creek Park’s five initial strategic planning goal topics—safety, access, stewardship, community engagement, and employee engagement—were common and both inward and outward-facing goals. Hierarchically, “partnerships” was routinely considered as a primary goal (a stand-alone topic) and as an integrated secondary goal (supportive within other topics). Additionally, we identified “community building” as an important, outward facing “assistance” goal, differentiated from “partnerships” in audience and encompassing how a park shows up for the urban community and demonstrates its value to the region. We discuss these findings toward urban park planning processes.
Journal Article
Patterns of Urban Park Use and Their Relationship to Factors of Quality: A Case Study of Tehran, Iran
Urban parks play an important role in increasing the quality of urban life. Thus, a variety of approaches to planning and decision-making regarding sustainable open spaces and urban parks is needed, especially when models from one location are borrowed to another with a very different culture. In many developing countries cities are expanding without proper planning of public green spaces which places pressure on the quality of life. In common with many Middle Eastern cities, Tehran, the capital of Iran is a large sprawling metropolis which has experienced fast growth since 1970 and with little in the way of comprehensive planning of green spaces as an organised system. To date there has been no comprehensive investigation of urban parks regarding their level of use, range of activities, quality of maintenance, evidence of anti-social activities or the demographic character of their catchment—important information for effective park planning. In this study a representative sample of 16 parks in Tehran was studied using a combination of site assessments and user observations. We found that a combination of factors concerning the quality of the parks such as presence of facilities, existence of water and other special attractions, as well as how well-lit they are, how well maintained and safe they are, has a lot to do with their level of use. Some pleasant parks with good facilities are less well used because of, e.g., evidence of anti-social behaviour, poor maintenance and accessibility. A key aspect we found is the difference between male and female users, with some parks being much less-well-used by women. Much more attention is needed for planning and management of parks in Tehran. The approach applied here has potential to help other cities in similar areas to learn more about their green space systems for planning purposes.
Journal Article
Exploring Equity in City Planning for Children’s Nature Play
Nature play provides important health and developmental benefits for children. To address concerns surrounding children’s lack of nature connection, cities across the United States (U.S.) implement various strategies to increase children’s access to nature play. Although cities implement these strategies, inequities in children’s nature access, connection, and their corresponding benefits still exist. To gain a better understanding of the ways in which equitable access to nature play is conceptualized and implemented on a local level, we employ an exploratory case study of seven cities participating in the Cities Connecting Children to Nature (CCCN) initiative. A qualitative analysis utilizing cross-case synthesis of program documents and semi-structured interviews was applied. In doing so, we identified city-level strategies that fall within conditions of a Systems Change Framework and themes related to the framing of equity in these approaches. The findings from this study provide practical information and further insight into the implementation and framing of equitable nature play planning strategies.
Journal Article