Pro-health Landscape Experience and Recreational Activities in Urban Parks

Urban green open spaces, parks especially, play an important role in promoting the health of urban residents. In order to understand how urban residents use green open spaces to meet their health needs, the study investigated users’ health status and their landscape experience needs, as well as recreational behaviors in four Shanghai urban parks, including comprehensive parks at both the city and local level and a forest park. Then it analyzed the relationship between them. The results indicated that: 1) park users reported three general categories of health problems; 2) there are two major landscape experience needs regarding green open spaces, in the natural and social aspects; 3) the investigated green open spaces mainly involve four types of recreational activities. We found in further interaction analysis that users with health concerns were more likely to prefer natural experience to social experience, and were more likely to engage less in socialized low-intense exercises with higher natural setting. After further analysis of their relevance and possible causes, this paper provides suggestions on park design concerning landscape experience and recreation for better human health.