Oosterbroek, B.; de Kraker, J.; Akkermans, S.; Esser, P.; Martens, P. Participatory Design of Urban Green Spaces to Improve Residents’ Health. Land2024, 13, 88.
Oosterbroek, B.; de Kraker, J.; Akkermans, S.; Esser, P.; Martens, P. Participatory Design of Urban Green Spaces to Improve Residents’ Health. Land 2024, 13, 88.
Oosterbroek, B.; de Kraker, J.; Akkermans, S.; Esser, P.; Martens, P. Participatory Design of Urban Green Spaces to Improve Residents’ Health. Land2024, 13, 88.
Oosterbroek, B.; de Kraker, J.; Akkermans, S.; Esser, P.; Martens, P. Participatory Design of Urban Green Spaces to Improve Residents’ Health. Land 2024, 13, 88.
Abstract
Urban Green Space (UGS) has important impacts on human health, but an integrated participatory approach to UGS design for improved residents’ health was lacking to date. The aim of our study was to develop and evaluate such a novel approach to address this gap. The approach was developed following guiding principles from the literature, and tested with groups of children and elderly as participants in two neighborhoods of Maastricht (The Netherlands) with a low score on economic and health indicators. Novel aspects of the approach are the inclusion of both positive and negative health effects, the combination of participant self-assessment and model-based assessment of the health effects of UGS designs, and the use of maps to visualize UGS designs and health effects. The participant-generated UGS designs resulted in a considerable self-assessed increase in use of the UGS for meeting, stress reduction or leisure-based physical activity, as compared to the current situation. The model-assessed positive and negative health effects of the participant-generated UGS designs were limited. The major strength of the developed approach is that it combines active participation of residents in UGS (re)design with assessment of the health effects of these UGS designs. Whereas in other participatory approaches to UGS design it often remains unclear whether the resulting designs represent an improvement in terms of health, our combination of computer model-based assessment and a participatory process produced clear outcomes regarding the health benefits and use of UGS designs.
Keywords
Spatial model; Urban Green Space; Human health; Ecosystem services; Ecosystem disservices; Participatory design, GIS; Quantitative assessment
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
