Structural Diversity: A Multi-dimensional Approach to Assess Recreational Services in Urban Parks

Abstract

Urban green spaces provide important recreational services for urban residents. In general, when park visitors enjoy "the green," they are in actuality appreciating a mix of biotic, abiotic, and man-made park infrastructure elements and qualities. We argue that these three dimensions of structural diversity have an influence on how people use and value urban parks. We present a straightforward approach for assessing urban parks that combines multi-dimensional landscape mapping and questionnaire surveys. We discuss the method as well the results from its application to differently sized parks in Berlin and Salzburg.

Keywords

Urban parks; Assessment; Structural diversity; Recreation

Published in

AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment
2014, Volume: 43, number: 4, pages: 480-491

UKÄ Subject classification

Other Earth and Related Environmental Sciences


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0508-9

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/89456