Features And Influencing Factors Of Urban Park Visitation In Nanjing

Rapid urbanization,which has been increasing population density and pace of life in the city environment,has changed the living environment and brought about serious problems in physical and mental health for residents.Building and improving public green space in city area to create healthy living environments has been paid much attention in urban planning and public health.As a key point in urban green space system,urban parks definitely have much significance for relevant practitioners and researchers in landscape architecture,who have been dedicated to understanding the features and drivers of urban park visitation.Previous studies in park visitation can be divided into 2 categories.The first category takes residents as the study object,discussing if and how distribution and accessibility of urban parks can influence their park visitation behavior and,furthermore,their health.The second category,including this study,takes urban parks as the study object,discussing how they should distribute in city area and what kind of surrounding area can enhancing their visitation from the perspective of spatial environment.Taking 67 urban parks in downtown Nanjing as case studies and based on the review and analysis on previous literature,this study,firstly,identified 4 types of potential influencing factors on park visitation,which include park characteristics,accessibility,surrounding physical spatial environments and socioeconomic environments.Then,using Baidu Heatmap as the data resource,park visitation in the study area was quantified.The features of park visitation were finally characterized quantificationally,and significant influencing factors were identified by statistical description and linear regression models.The analyses on park visitation features found that heat values of urban parks in the study area were unevenly distributed.Only a small part of urban parks had a relatively higher level of heat values.Besides,the overall heat values of urban parks in weekends were higher than which in weekdays.There were more visitors on 11 a.m.and 16 p.m.in weekends,while this obvious time preference was not shown in weekdays.In addition,the more desirable urban parks tended to locate in downtown area with higher population density or in the old town with profound cultural backgrounds of history and humanity.At last,even though most of urban parks with higher heat values in weekends,there were still a few on the contrary.In the linear regression model,the dependent variable referred to average heat value of each urban park,and independent variables included park area,park type,the presence of water,integration and choice of road segments where park entrances were located,density of service facilities,diversity of all kinds of facilities,density of households and average house prices within500 m buffer of each urban park.It was concluded that park area,type,density of service facilities and diversity of facilities had significant impacts on park visitation.Large parks tended to have lower average heat values.And the values in street parks were higher than that in specific parks and comprehensive parks.Surrounding service facilities and more diverse facilities both could enhance urban park visitation.Ultimately,the relative importance of these 4 factors on park visitation was evaluated,in descending order,they were density of service facilities,park area,facilities diversity and park type.In the end,based on the results of this empirical research,this study also contributed specific suggestions from 4 aspects of park attributes,accessibility,physical spatial environments and social economic environments,aiming to provide theoretical evidence for policy makers and planners on park planning and management.