12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989

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Divya Subramanian270, Arnab Jana. Centre for Urban Science and ... [email protected], arnab.jana@iitb.ac.in. ABSTRACT. Background ...
Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2 1329 ASSESSING ACCESSIBILITY, USABILITY, ACTIVITY PROFILE AND AGE APPROPRIATENESS OF URBAN INDIAN PARKS: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THREE INDIAN CITIES Divya Subramanian270, Arnab Jana

Centre for Urban Science and Engineering, Indian [email protected], [email protected]

Institute

of

Technology

Bombay,

Mumbai,

India.

Email:

ABSTRACT Background and Purpose: Proximity and accessibility to parks alleviates human health and well-being by providing the opportunity for play and recreation. For a conducive neighbourhood, providing inclusive public spaces for people with all range of movement capabilities across all age groups is essential. The study of accessibility and usability of a park, as a physical factor of design function, and the quality and availability of age specific services is crucial to understand the age appropriateness of public parks. Objectives: Few studies have been conducted in India to understand the performance of parks with respect to their design and available amenities. There is a knowledge gap in analytically understanding the implications of landscape design on the feasibility of access and use of parks. To fill this gap, an empirical study of selected neighbourhood level parks across three Indian cities was undertaken to evaluate their accessibility and age appropriateness performance using a multivariate model of analysis. Methods: A selection of neighbourhood level parks was made based on their location, size, and available amenities. A total of 21 parks were selected, seven each from Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai for the empirical study. Primary data that included qualitative and quantitative aspects of physical profile, immediate surrounding, amenities, usage patterns, temporal patterns, and management and maintenance aspects were collated from these selected parks. Statistical models were utilised to analyse these data variables. Results: The findings indicate a great shortfall in basic entry convenience of public parks for people with movement disabilities. Further, the study reflected the deficit of age specific amenities in most parks. The available park amenities lacked appropriate landscape design principles driving the layout. The activity profile of women was observed to be drastically lower, especially so in women between ages 10 and 40. Conclusions: The study revealed the dire need of incorporating universal design with barrier free concepts while designing and developing a public park. Also, the study highlighted the gender disparity in the user activity profile. Implications for Practice and Policy: In this study we further discuss the design strategies that could be incorporated in existing parks and future projects, to make them more accessible and inclusive. Also, detrimental practices in park design causing gender and age-related usage disparities are identified to aid policy guidelines in the design of Indian public parks. Keywords: Neighbourhood Parks; Universal Design; Amenities; Age appropriateness; developing nations.

1. INTRODUCTION Recreational open spaces like parks and playgrounds are vital urban amenities that offer crucial contact to nature while providing an opportunity for play and recreation, building a sense of social identity (Matsuoka & Kaplan, 2008). The ability to access these public amenities is an essential factor in improving the quality of urban life (del Saz Salazar & García Menéndez, 2007; Lee & Hong, 2013) irrespective of any categorization of gender, age, physical capacity, race or economic status (Francis, Giles-Corti, Wood, & Knuiman, 2012). The existing urban India shows a significant lack of open spaces given the WHO recommended standard of nine square meter of open space per person is met only in few Indian cities (MoUD, 2015). Also, there is a lack of an evidence-based decision-making system in place for urban open spaces management in many Indian cities. This results in underperforming open spaces that tend to cater only to a certain section of the society. The sustainable development goals (SDG) as recommended by UNDP (Egmond, 2016), suggests achieving sustainable urban growth by investing in improving urban open spaces with appropriate amenities and design, making them inclusive and participatory for all. Neighbourhood parks (NP) are recreational open spaces that are public amenities provided at the neighbourhood level for a population of 10,000, located at walking distance from the residential areas and their size ranges between 2000 to 4000 square meters (MoUD, 2014). The Urban Greening Guidelines 2014 published by the Ministry of Urban Development, India enumerates the various ecological, social, physical, cultural, and economic benefits of parks and open spaces, especially in the neighbourhood scale. Given the importance of neighbourhood parks, especially in the developing nation’s context, few studies have been conducted in India to understand the performance of parks with respect to their design and available amenities. The provision of neighbourhood parks in urban India is significantly low when compared to the WHO standards of a minimum of 9 square meters of green open space per person (MoUD, 2014). The Town and Country Planning organization of India report describes the provision of open spaces in Indian cities to be abysmally low and stipulates goals to achieve the international minimum standards by concentrating on various greenfield development. However, 270

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Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2 little importance has been given on the existing parks and developing ways of improving the same. With rapid urbanization in India and swift densification of cities, providing well performing, sustainable parks will be necessary for a conducive urban quality of life. Various studies conducted on urban green amenities look at specific age groups like children (Reyes, Páez, & Morency, 2014) or the elderly (K, O, & W, 2017) for their assessment of amenities provision or design performance. Most of the studies are concentrated in the global north and developed nations with some upcoming research observed from China and South East Asian countries (Fors, Molin, Murphy, & Konijnendijk van den Bosch, 2015). There exists a significant research gap in evaluation of neighbourhood parks in the urban Indian context, considering the needs of people belonging to all age groups and both genders. To fill this knowledge gap, an empirical study of selected neighbourhood level parks across three Indian cities was undertaken to evaluate their performance with respect to users of different age groups and genders.

2. METHODS AND MATERIAL An empirical survey was designed with the intention to comparatively analyse the existential conditions of neighbourhood parks in different cities for a better representation of the country. Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai were selected as the three tier 1 cities where a selection of 21 neighbourhood parks, 7 per city was finalised post selection from 50 shortlisted parks. The selection of parks was made based on their size acreage, location within a residential zone, available amenities, functional hours and management profile. Private parks, regulated public parks, specialised parks, parks within special zones etc. were excluded from the selection. The 21 selected parks were each allocated one day of study, with three observations made of 1 hour each in the morning, afternoon and evening hours the day. This was done with the intention to derive a temporal variation of activity profile and usage of the parks. A detailed survey questionnaire was designed by the authors post a detailed literature review encompassing physical built elements, amenities, universal design features, design quality and maintenance along with the study of user behaviour and their activity profile. The WHO defines ‘universal design’ as a design process that increases the usability, safety, health and social participation of an environment, space, system or product, making it inclusive to the needs of diverse people with diverse abilities (World Health Organization, 2011). With the study of 21 neighbourhood parks, a total of 2131 users were observed. 56% of the total number of users were male and 44 % female. The users were also divided into 5 age groups of toddlers (0 – 4 yrs.), children (5 – 12 yrs.), young adults (13 – 24 yrs.), adults (25 – 59 yrs.) and the elderly (60+ yrs.). The observed percentage brake-up of these age groups were 13% toddlers, 18% children, 24% young adults, 22% adults, and 23% elderly of the total observed users. Temporal user profile was also captured with 40% morning users, 8% afternoon users and 52% evening users of the neighbourhood parks studied. From the basic descriptive of the user study, it is observed that neighbourhood parks are most popular in the evenings followed by mornings. The usage drops drastically in the afternoon time of the day. From this, we could infer that user comfort within the neighbourhood parks also is not conducive enough to attract users in the afternoon. Also, the working class would be occupied in the afternoons, and so their percentage drops. Also, the dependent age group of toddlers and children users, who rely on adults to escort them to parks also are reduced. Young adults of 13 – 24 years is the highest user group observed, closely followed by the elderly while toddlers were the lowest user group. The observed neighbourhood park users engaged in various activities which were classified into 5 main groups of walking, sitting & socializing, exercising, active play and miscellaneous activities. The user performed activity was mapped and analysed per the city location as well. Figure 54 explains the activity pattern of the users observed where walking is the most performed activity followed by sitting and socialising. Bengaluru users were found to be most active while Mumbai users were comparatively less active. Miscellaneous activities like engaging in social groups like laughing clubs, yoga club etc. was observed highest in Chennai and lowest in Bengaluru. There is a visible drop observed in the activity of exercising in Mumbai. This can be related to the lower provision of outdoor gym provision noted in Mumbai when compared to Chennai and Bengaluru as explained further in the paper. The neighbourhood park users of Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai when distributed and compared by gender and age, revealed certain city specific aspects of usage. As seen in Figure 55, with males represented in blue and female users in orange, there is a considerable gender disparity in user profile observed in all three cities. The highest gender disparity is seen in the 13 - 24 age group of users in Mumbai with Bengaluru reporting the least gap. Interestingly, 25 - 59 years Bengaluru users showed inverse relationship with the female users exceeding the male users. This is not seen in any other age groups of other cities. There is an upward trend with age in female users of Bengaluru and Chennai, especially rising in the adult and elderly age groups. Only Mumbai reports higher female users in the 13 – 24 age group. The gender gap is lowest in the toddler and children groups of Mumbai and in the elderly group in Bengaluru. Highest gap in the children’s group 5 – 12 years is seen in Bengaluru and Chennai. Highest number of 13 – 24 years male users was reported in Mumbai among all cities and age groups.

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Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2

Figure 54 City wise activity profile of neighbourhood park users

Neighbourhood park amenities and universal design features The empirical study was designed to record the park amenities and UD features with the intention to evaluate the age appropriateness, usability and inclusiveness of the parks as a function of their feature provision. Aspects studied for evaluation were presence of paved walkway, seating benches, toilets, security staff, shading devices, kid’s play area, entry cost, drinking water outlets, universal entry, tactile flooring, maps and signages, handrails and ramps, parking, cleaning, street connectivity, boundary profile, street lighting etc. Out of these features, using dimension reduction factor analysis, 10 aspects were finalised for further evaluation. These were 7 amenities of walkway, seating, entry cost, boundary wall, security staff, shading devices and kid’s play area and 3 UD features of tactile flooring walkway, legible maps and signages and presence of handrail and ramps.

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Figure 55 City wise user study distributed by gender and age groups The selected 10 aspects of neighbourhood parks were further analysed based on design quality and maintenance with scoring done on a scale of 1 being least and 10 being highest per aspect for all parks studied. Each aspect was given equal weightage and the cumulative of all the scores was then collated as the park performance. This performance score, out of hundred, was further analysed with the user footfalls categorised by gender, age and city to assess their impact on usage and user footfall.

Figure 56 City wise neighbourhood park performance comparison

3. RESULTS The performance scoring derived for each park were compared city wise. The highest scoring park (95) was observed in Bengaluru and the lowest scoring in Mumbai (31). The highest score in Mumbai parks was 91 and lowest was 31. The highest in Chennai was 82 and lowest was 34. In Bengaluru, the lowest scoring park was scored 42. The seven parks’ scoring per city were collated to derive a city-wise comparison. The city wise comparison of park performance across the three cities is shown in Figure 56. The bars in darker grey hue are the 6 amenities aspects and the light grey hue coloured bars are the UD features. As observed in Figure 56, consistently high performance is seen in amenities provision in Bengaluru and Chennai while higher UD feature provision score is seen in Mumbai parks. Moving into specifics, Mumbai performed the lowest in free entry. It was observed that all parks in Chennai and Bengaluru studied had free entry while 3 parks in Mumbai charged an entry fee. Provision of kid’s play area was highest in Chennai. Bengaluru performed lowest in UD features of wheelchair friendly entry and tactile flooring walkway provision. Chennai performed lowest in the provision of handrail and ramps among UD features. Maps and signages of Mumbai were scored the highest while provision of handrail and ramps was scored highest for Bengaluru. The studied neighbourhood parks’ user profile was used to guage the impact of park performance on user footfall, deriving the age appropriateness of the parks specific to the age group or gender. With this intention, the age wise

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Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2 categorized user data was further classified into the male and female genders and juxtaposed against the park performance to review their impact.

Figure 57 City-wise park performance (bars) juxtaposed with male & female 0-4 years toddler user profile (line) As seen in Figure 57, the toddler age group user profile is superimposed on the city-wise park performance graph. The female toddler users were higher most open spaces of Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. A general trend of increase in footfall with increase in performance is seen. However, there are certain exceptions seen in parks where female toddlers are responding much more in numbers with the performance in comparison to the male toddlers. Parks 3,4,6 from Mumbai and 10, 13 from Bengaluru with park 21 from Chennai showed presence of UD features which were not present in other parks. Hence the higher numbers of female toddlers in the parks.

Figure 58 City-wise park performance juxtaposed with male & female 5-12 years children user profile As seen in Figure 58, the users belonging to 5-12 years start to show gender disparity with the male users superseding the female users. The two groups respond differently to park performance with parks 3,4 of Mumbai, 13 in Bengaluru and 21 in Chennai being more conducive to female children. From the graph it could be deduced that parks 5 in Mumbai, 11, 14 in Bengaluru and 15 in Chennai had certain detrimental factors that reduced the female users drastically. These parks were found to lack in provision of shading devices and UD features. Figure 59 demonstrates the high number of 13-24 age group users of Mumbai and Chennai, especially the male users. Bengaluru showed lower numbers compared to the other cities. As seen in the figure, there is a considerable drop in female users in Mumbai parks 2, 6, Bengaluru parks 10, 11, 13, and Chennai parks 16, 18 and 19. When checked with the amenities provision of these parks, it was observed that some parks had certain features lacking like kid’s play area, seating provision and security staff presence. Also, the drastic drop of female users seen in parks 2,16 and 18 relates to the missing UD features and shading devices provision.

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Figure 59 City-wise park performance juxtaposed with male & female 13-24 years young adult user profile As seen in Figure 60, a drop of female users is seen in parks 2,14 and 18 more drastically than others. The factors missing in these parks were shading devices and UD features. The is considerable gender disparity in male and female users observed in this age group as well. However, certain exception cases in Bengaluru are seen where the female users exceed the male users. As seen in Figure 61, the gender gap is not as evident with female and male users being more equitable. There are many parks where female elderly users are exceeding the male elderly. The parks where female elderly is showing a downward dip are the same ones observed in earlier age groups that lacked amenities like shading devices and security staff along with UD features.

Figure 60 City-wise park performance juxtaposed with male & female 25-59 years adult user profile

Figure 61 City-wise park performance juxtaposed with male & female 60+ years elderly user profile

Gender disparity of users

From the comparative analysis study, across age groups and divided into genders, it is easy to observe the usage pattern is greatly dependent on the provision of amenities and certain amenities are of more affinity to the female users with their absence causing a significant drop in usage. These features are mainly UD features and amenities like shading devices, security staff and seating provision. The male numbers show a similar trend across all age groups. Gender disparity is lowest in pre-puberty and elderly age groups. Higher disparity is seen in young adults and adults age groups. This could be associated with the sense of safety and how the societal and cultural norms, combined with lack of amenities

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Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2 causes less females of the young and adult age groups to use neighbourhood parks. To further test the hypothesis that the presence of amenities and UD factors impacts the users based on their age and gender, multivariate analysis was conducted using linear regression for the dependent variable of park performance and independent variable of users of different gender and age groups. As seen in Table 22, five models representing the five age-group of users studied classified by their genders were regressed on the dependent variable of park performance. Table 22 Multivariate analysis of user groups gender and age wise as a function of park performance Dependent variable: Park Performance Scoring

Male 0 to 4 Female 0 to 4 Male 5 to 12 Female 5 to 12 Male 13 to 24 Female 13 to 24 Male 25 to 59 Female 25 to 59 Male 60+ Female 60+ Note: ** significant at 95%; *** significant at 99%

t-stat 1.044 -0.484 -0.903 1.531 -0.945 2.176 -0.290 2.270 -1.691 2.992

sig 0.310 0.635 0.378 0.143 0.357 0.043** 0.775 0.036** 0.108 0.008***

R2 .147 .158 .252 .359 .518

Model 1 which looked at the toddler age group showed insignificant impact of park performance on their numbers. This could be caused by the fact that toddlers are not the decision makers with respect to the choice of parks to visit. Similarly, model 2 showed insignificant impact. In models 3,4 and 5, the results are more significant with female users 13-24 and female users 25–59 showing significant association with the park performance at 95% confidence levels. In the model 5, the strong positive impact of park performance on female elderly users is seen significant at 99% confidence level. The other aspect to notice is that except in the first model of toddlers, male users show negative association with the park performance reflecting that their usage is not as impacted by the park amenities provision. Table 23 Pattern matrix showing PCA results for user groups Pattern Matrix Male 0 to 4 Female 0 to 4 Male 5 to12 Female 5 to12 Male 60+ Female 60+ Male 13 to 24 Female 13 to 24 Male 25 to 59 Female 25 to 59

Component 1 1.077 1.008 0.923 0.801 0.782 0.795

2

0.834 0.771 1.105 0.744

Note: Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Promax with Kaiser Normalization.

To further investigate the user age groups and their interrelationship, we performed a principal component analysis taking the five male and female age groups giving ten factor dimensions. Principal component extraction method based on an eigen value greater than one was conducted using Promax rotation of kappa value four. The resultant model was tested to be significant with a KMO value of adequacy of 0.786. The model cumulative explained 85% variance giving two factors. The Table 23 represents the principal component analysis model. From the PCA analysis, there are two groups of users that we could classify as independent and dependent age groups based on physical capabilities. The elderly, toddler and children are the dependents who have some movement capabilities shortcomings. The independent group of young adults and adults are presumed to have better movement capabilities.

4. DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION

The intention of this study was to evaluate neighbourhood parks across India to evaluate the relation between provision of amenities & universal design feature and resultant user and usage profile. This study has successfully demonstrated the positive impact of amenities provision on the user footfalls and has detailed out the various factors that are essential for user comfort for users based on their age groups and gender. Various studies that have looked into the association of accessibility to parks as a measure of its attractiveness or usability (Chang & Liao, 2011; Kun, Hao, Yannan, Mingrui, & Quan, 2012; Oh & Jeong, 2007; Rigolon, 2016; Rojas, Páez, Barbosa, & Carrasco, 2016; Wei, 2017). However, few studies have looked into the importance of parks amenities and universal design features on their performance (Fors et al., 2015). The current research provides substantial evidence towards significant positive impact of universal design amenities on user comfort or attractiveness and hence must be incorporated into the design process of all recreational open spaces to derive better functioning and more inclusive open spaces.

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Proceedings | 12th World Congress of the RSAI | ISBN 978-989-54216-0-2 The research conducted across 21 neighbourhood parks in three cities was done with one day allotted per park. This was done due to time constraints given the authors personally conducted the empirical survey. As the study was limited in time, the temporal variation based on weekdays and weekends as well as seasonal variations could be the way forward to better understand the user requirements and map usage patterns in detail. Also, the study of other types of open spaces like playgrounds, district parks, public squares could be undertaken to devise a better framework or model for ameliorating urban Indian open spaces. The study also highlighted the dire need to incorporate universal design and barrier free concepts within the design process while developing public parks. The results from this study could be utilized in making better informed decisions to improve urban open space quality. With an evidence-based decision-making process regarding parks and open spaces, the process to achieve sustainable development goal 11.7 set by UN of providing universal, inclusive and safe open spaces with focus on women, children and elderly could be successfully achieved.

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