User Awareness for the Benefits of Urban Parks: Ankara City Case

Abstract

In today’s world, people living in the city face difficulties in coping with stress, anxiety and fatigue.  The individuals are in the need of being in touch with the nature and relieving stress and pressure in order to get away from these emotions. The parks which are one of the remedial opportunities for the individuals in their living places in terms of spiritual and physical aspects have a positive impact on the life quality of these individuals.  In the contemporary societies, the existing open spaces and new designing spaces are regulated in accordance with the requirements of the age and the society given. In this regard, while urban parks, which are one of the important factors of urban landscape, are presented to the user service, it is significant to ensure balance the relationship between environment and human in order to increase the benefits obtained from these parks.  The experts and institutions involved in the planning, design and management of such parks possess certain knowledge of these benefits. However, the level of knowledge and awareness of urban population or park users are not clear.  In this study, in the case of Ankara city, it was researched how much the park users have knowledge of the economic, ecological, social and physical benefits of urban parks.  One-on-one interviews with make a survey were conducted with 384 urban park users. According to the findings, 47.2% of the participants stated that they do not have general information about the benefits of urban parks, 31.8% of them that they had knowledge, and 20.8% said that they are not interested.  The participants stated that urban parks were effective in cleaning the polluted air (37.5%), lowering the urban temperature (33.3%) and increasing the relative air humidity (31.3%).  Based on these findings, suggestions were made to the researches, professional disciplines and public institutions.