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      It's not just about the park, it's about integration too: why people choose to use or not use urban greenspaces

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          Abstract

          Background

          Greenspace has the potential to be a vital resource for promoting healthy living for people in urban areas, offering both opportunities for physical activity and wellbeing. Much research has explored the objectively measurable factors within areas to the end of explaining the role of greenspace access in continuing health inequalities. This paper explores the subjective reasons why people in urban areas choose to use, or not use, local public greenspace.

          Methods

          In-depth interviews with 24 people living in two areas of Glasgow, United Kingdom were conducted, supplemented with participant photography and participatory methods. Data was thematically categorised to explore subjectively experienced facilitators and barriers to greenspace use in urban areas.

          Results

          From the perspective of current and potential urban greenspace users, access is revealed to be about more than the physical characteristics of neighbourhoods, greenspace resources or objectively measurable features of walkability and connectivity. Subjectively, the idea of walkability includes perceptions of social cohesion at a community level and the level of felt integration and inclusion by individuals in their communities. Individual's feelings of integration and inclusion potentially mitigate the effects of experiential barriers to urban greenspace access, such as evidence of anti-social behaviour.

          Conclusions

          We conclude that improving access to greenspace for all in urban communities will require more than providing high quality resources such as parks, footpaths, activities and lighting. Physical availability interacts with community contexts already established and a holistic understanding of access is required. A key cultural component of areas and neighbourhoods is the level of social cohesion, a factor that has the potential to reinforce existing health inequalities through shaping differentiated greenspace access between subgroups of the local population.

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          Most cited references17

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          Environmental factors associated with adults' participation in physical activity: a review.

          N Humpel (2002)
          Promoting physical activity is a public health priority, and changes in the environmental contexts of adults' activity choices are believed to be crucial. However, of the factors associated with physical activity, environmental influences are among the least understood. Using journal scans and computerized literature database searches, we identified 19 quantitative studies that assessed the relationships with physical activity behavior of perceived and objectively determined physical environment attributes. Findings were categorized into those examining five categories: accessibility of facilities, opportunities for activity, weather, safety, and aesthetic attributes. Accessibility, opportunities, and aesthetic attributes had significant associations with physical activity. Weather and safety showed less-strong relationships. Where studies pooled different categories to create composite variables, the associations were less likely to be statistically significant. Physical environment factors have consistent associations with physical activity behavior. Further development of ecologic and environmental models, together with behavior-specific and context-specific measurement strategies, should help in further understanding of these associations. Prospective studies are required to identify possible causal relationships.
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            Many Pathways from Land Use to Health: Associations between Neighborhood Walkability and Active Transportation, Body Mass Index, and Air Quality

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              View through a window may influence recovery from surgery.

              R. Ulrich (1984)
              Records on recovery after cholecystectomy of patients in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital between 1972 and 1981 were examined to determine whether assignment to a room with a window view of a natural setting might have restorative influences. Twenty-three surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than 23 matched patients in similar rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act
                The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
                BioMed Central
                1479-5868
                2010
                28 October 2010
                : 7
                : 78
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 94 Elmbank Street, Glasgow, G2 4DL, UK
                [2 ]Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, 4 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow, G12 8RZ, UK
                Article
                1479-5868-7-78
                10.1186/1479-5868-7-78
                2978120
                21029448
                2d29c2be-6e83-4c26-af7f-34ecf9f53e6d
                Copyright ©2010 Seaman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 25 March 2010
                : 28 October 2010
                Categories
                Research

                Nutrition & Dietetics
                Nutrition & Dietetics

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