Research on Evaluation of Children’s Outdoor Play Space in Chinese Urban Parks Based on Play Values

Creating a healthy growth environment for children has become an essential part of the current children-friendly city construction. Designing a play space that is beneficial to children's growth and development is an important aspect. Based on the concept of play value, this research creates an evaluation model for the design of children’s outdoor play space based on the framework under three characteristics: environment naturalness, play functionality and play safety. The evaluation model and standard have been established by setting up the weight of 22 factors through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. Sixty urban parks in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu are assessed. The results show that the play safety is the most valued factor by park designers, while the concepts of “providing loose parts”, “observable/contactable small animals” and other two factors are much less considered and even not accepted and applied. The factors of “sandpit”, “appropriate waterbody/surface”, “adequate seating area” and other five factors are all required to improve their status during the design. The “signage system” is considered but its design needs further improvement. The research reveals the limitations of the current space design for children in urban areas, providing a basis for improving future design and for relevant researches.