Restorative Environmental Evaluation And Optimization Design Of Community Parks In Harbin

With the development of high-density cities,problems such as environmental congestion,air pollution and lack of space for activities have emerged.These problems have a serious impact on the health of urban residents,and there is an urgent need for activity spaces that can achieve physical and mental health recovery.Community parks are easily accessible and open,they are a place for nearby residents to spend time outdoors,and they are a quality medium for promoting the health of the public.It is therefore important to consider how to optimise the design of current community parks in order to create restorative park environment.The relationship between community park environments and the physical and mental health of users has been investigated by scholars both at home and abroad.However,relatively few studies have applied the theory of restorative environment to the design of community parks,which cannot guide the optimal design of restorative environments in community parks.Therefore,the study aims to achieve the following two objectives: firstly,to explore the characteristics of community park restorative environment,and to establish an evaluation system for restorative environment characteristics,so as to pinpoint the characteristics of community parks that need to be optimised,and to make the optimisation design target-oriented.Secondly,to explore the principles and design models of community park restorative environments,with a view to providing universal guidance for the design of community park restorative environments.An extensive study of nineteen community parks in Harbin was conducted and three representative community parks(Jianguo Park,Dongzhi Park and Xuanyuan Park)were selected based on appropriate criteria to conduct a comprehensive study of the restorative environment from both the supply and demand sides.The study was conducted to understand the current state of the restorative environment in the community parks,as well as the restorative behaviour and needs of the users.A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used to determine a theoretical model of the environmental characteristics of community park restoration.Indepth interviews were conducted with users in the park,and a theoretical model of the elements of the community park restoration environmental characteristics was obtained using qualitative analysis of grounded theory.The data was collected through scenic beauty estimation and semantic differential methods,and the accuracy of the theoretical model was verified quantitatively using factor analysis and correlation analysis.There are 14 elements of community park restorative environment,which can be divided into three dimensions:visual elements,activity elements and psychological elements.The visual elements include plant colour richness,plant hierarchy,diversity of plant species,aesthetic plant shape,terrain undulation and openness of view.Activity elements include the range of activity spaces,infrastructure adequacy,variety of activity facilities,safety of facilities,and comfort of facilities.The psychological elements include sense of environmental safety,environmental health and sense of facility scale.With reference to the theoretical model hierarchy obtained,the evaluation system of the environmental factors of community park restorative environment was established.Analytic hierarchy process was applied to find the weights of each characteristic factor.The weights of the criteria for evaluating the environmental elements of community parks are as follows:visual elements(0.4753)> activity elements(0.2965)> psychological elements(0.2282).The visual elements containing the indicator layers are ranked in order of weight: plant colour richness(0.2508)> aesthetic plant shape(0.1865)> openness of view(0.1785)> diversity of plant species(0.1651)> plant hierarchy(0.1295),terrain undulation(0.0896).The weighting of the indicators in the activity element is as follows: safety of facilities(0.2633)> range of activity spaces(0.2403)> infrastructure adequacy(0.2077)> variety of activity facilities(0.1494)> comfort of facilities(0.1393).The psychological element contains indicator layer weights ranked as follows: environmental health(0.4548)> sense of environmental safety(0.4013)> sense of facility scale(0.1438).The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation system was applied to the three community parks to find the elements of the restorative environment that need to be optimised in the sample parks.The overall score of the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was: Dongzhi Park(3.0972)> Xuanyuan Park(2.9022)> Jianguo Park(2.7982).Dongzhi Park was rated as good overall in terms of characteristics of restorative environment.Xuanyuan Park and Jianguo Park were rated as average overall in terms of characteristics of restorative environment.The activity elements of Dongzhi Park was rated as average.The visual and psychological elements of Xuan Yuan Park was rated as average.The activity and psychological elements of Jian Guo Park was rated as average.By coupling the functional system of user behaviour patterns with the community park restorative environment characteristic element system,the community park restorative environment optimisation design principles and the “point,line and body” optimisation model are proposed.Based on the design principles of the restorative environment,the optimisation model is used to optimise the design of the three sample parks for elements that were under-performed in the evaluation.The aim is to provide a reference to update the restorative environment of a wider range of community parks for all ages.