WHAT MAKES PUBLIC PARKS MORE ACCESSIBLE? (EVALUATING SINGAPORE'S PUBLIC PARK STRATEGIES)

Abstract

Urban green spaces play a crucial role in Singapore’s urban fabric, being a key component in liveable cities. In pursuit of this, urban planners have incorporated numerous public parks to increase residents’ quality of life. Singapore’s constantly evolving park strategies currently strive to make parks more accessible by improving inclusivity and walkability through park upgrading, and expanding and enhancing the Park Connector Network. This study attempts to quantitatively evaluate the effect of these policy interventions and how it may vary among residents as well as qualitatively analyse residents’ perceptions of such strategies. For quantitative evaluation, this study uses self-reported change in park visit frequency after treatment as a proxy for measuring park accessibility improvement. Multiple linear regression is used to consider demographic and other variances amongst residents. To deduce the plausible heterogenous effects of residents’ perceptions of improvement and value systems on accessibility, several additional analyses and qualitative survey findings are considered. Overall, improving inclusiveness and walkability improve public park accessibility. By upgrading park functionality, a notable 55% reported increase in frequency suggesting its importance to residents. Enhancements in walkability to parks resulted in 37% reporting increase but over 85% stating improvements in walking experience, possibly because residents utilise park connectors as recreational spaces instead of visiting parks. The impact of accessibility treatments are also larger for younger, more educated and less frequent park visitors. These findings have significant implications on policy evolution to ensure the maximum accessibility of public parks for all residents, to fully utilise park spaces.