An Empirical Research On The Spatial And Temporal Distribution Of Park Users And Their Environment-behavior Characteristics Based On Behavioral Mapping

It has been exited since ancient times that park serves as the role of human social interaction media. However, the current landscape design focuses more on forms than function, and a lot of outdoor public space has a low utilization. These phenomena prompted a review of the purpose and significance of landscape design. Who does the landscape space serve? Is it an artwork which modern designers create to show personal aesthetic tendencies, or is it a dimensional territorial space which serves the public and has close connection with their daily life? The huge aesthetic gap between designers and users often leads to the mismatch of the expected behaviors assumed by designers with the actual behaviors conducted by users, thus making the environmental induction function increasingly weakened. What kind of space do users tend to stay and have activities in? How different types of behavior associated with a variety of spatial elements? Will users’age, gender and other individual factors have great effect on their spatial and temporal distribution in outdoor space? These are the current problems to be solved in the field of Environmental-behavior Studies.Based on the Environment-behavior Study theory, three representative district-level parks in Hangzhou were selected as research sites. Behavior Mapping Method, Flat-screen Drawing Method and Statistical Method were innovatively integrated in this study. From the two-dimensional point of view consists of time and space, and combined with individual factors including gender and age, the amount of visited users during certain period of time, their activity types, their spatial and temporal distribution, and their environmental behavior characteristics were empirically studied. A large number of spatial data accumulated through empirical observation from July to August2012was processed and analyzed by AutoCAD and Excel software, and the results showed:(1) The number of park visitors has significant correlation with time period. Weather factors such as light, temperature, sunset, largely determine users’ location and behavior types, therefore, good climatic conditions can greatly extend outdoor stay;(2) The utilization of square space has Boundary Effect, the use of lawn space shows Landmark Effect, and the occupation of pavilion and veranda shows the End Tendency.(3) Space use is closely related with its shape, scale and the outer edge feature. Those highly occupied places often have high level of reachability, less interfered by traffic, they also have reasonable sub-space division in which centralized space is available to support mixed use, Thus leading significant Clustering Effect;(4) Users with different ages and genders have distinct territorialism and periodism features in their daily park use, and show different environment-behavior tendencies of their own group.