A Study On Recreation Behaviors Characteristics Of Shanghai Contemporary Urban Parks

This thesis studies the recreation behaviors in the Shanghai urban parks in late 20th century and early 21th century. The parks selected include Huangxing Park which is located in resident areas, Xujiahui Park which is located in downtown and Yanzhong Park which is located under elevated highways. The thesis studied the former two parks deeply, and the third one roughly. Multiple methods are used including observations, questionnaires, thorough interviews, to study the types of the recreation behaviors which exist in these parks, the characteristics of these visitors (ages, genders), the characteristics related to the arrival to the parks (the distances to the parks, the used transportations, the frequencies of visits, and whether the visit is on purpose), the characteristics related to the stay in the parks ( the location and time durations of the stay), the characteristics related to the happening of recreation behaviors (whether the visitors are engrossed, the preferred distances between people, whether the visitors prefer to be paid attention to , whether they prefer to share the sites with other activities). The characteristics are closely related to the locations of parks, the characteristics the recreation behaviors themselves, the design of the sites. Finally, the thesis provides some suggestions for the design of urban parks according to these analyses.