Original article
Restorative properties of green sheltered spaces and their morphological characteristics in urban parks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2023.127986Get rights and content

Abstract

The properties of green space for physical and mental health have been widely demonstrated, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, few studies have systematically focused on spatial indicator thresholds that provide a sense of refuge with restoration benefits. Four morphological indicators as area, coverage, enclosure, and the ratio of width to height(D/H), were quantified for thirty-one scenes in outdoor green sheltered spaces in seven urban parks of Harbin in China. The results show that the sense of refuge and the morphological character of a green space constitute elements that influence restorative properties. Green spaces with different morphological indicators have different restorative properties. The morphological indicator ranges that produce better restorative properties were obtained: 250–500 m2 for area, 0.25–0.35 for coverage, 0.3–0.4 or 0.8–1 for enclosure, and 0.7–1.5 for D/H. This can provide references for the construction of restorative activity spaces in urban parks.

Introduction

The positive effects of the natural environment on people's physical and psychological restoration have been explored in previous studies. Green parks are an important part of the urban environment and an important way for urban residents to get in touch with nature, improve their physical and mental health, and promote social interaction (Rap et al., 2019). The environment is considered more restorative when the urban setting includes natural elements such as parks and gardens(Weber and Trojan, 2018). People benefit from urban green spaces (Yakinlar and Akpinar, 2022a) because exposure to natural environments can improve mood, reduce blood pressure and heart activity and improve the ability to concentrate (Bowler et al., 2010). In a natural environment, not only is emotional recovery consciously experienced, but also unconscious physiological responses are triggered that allow a person to recover quickly from stress (Ulrich et al., 1991). In the stress test, people who had weekly contact with nature perceived lower stress than those who had no contact (Biernacka, 2019). Residents living in neighborhoods with a better natural environment are 40% less likely to be obese than those living in neighborhoods with a poorer environment because the former are three times more likely to participate in physical activity than the latter (E., V. d. B. A, 2017). During a novel coronavirus pandemic lockdown (COVID-19), visiting parks became the main way people relieved their stress and emotions (Zhu and Xu, 2020). Wards with windows overlooking natural views are more conducive to patient recovery than those with views of buildings or those without windows (Ulrich et al., 1991). Moreover, an association between natural views and a low-stress work environment was noted (Kaplan and Kalpan, 2001). On a college campus, most students prefer to go to a natural space without buildings rather than a space surrounded by buildings and without life (Felsten, 2009). In summary, urban green spaces have benefits for people's perceived recovery.

The influence of green space characteristics on perception and restoration has been explored. An approach to understanding the restoration process and the effects of restorative environments on psychological well-being is provided by Kaplan's attention restoration theory (ART), a cognitive framework concerned with recovery from mental fatigue or directed attention fatigue (Kaplan, 1995). The theory suggests that natural environments with four dimensions, i.e., being away, fascination, extent, and compatibility, are restorative. It has been shown that different scales, materials, interfaces, landscapes, and other elements in space have certain effects on human psychology, resulting in different psychological perceptions (Bond et al., 2012; Lovejoy et al., 2010; Cao, 2016). Spatial configuration and physical characteristics of landscape features can strongly influence perceptions of fear and danger (Baran et al., 2018). Various elements in natural landscapes, such as an undulating topography, diverse water environments, extensive grasslands, and dense jungles with a diverse range of species, can attract people to nature and contribute to physical and mental health (Kaplan and Talbot ,2013). The presence of elementary natural components like bushes, trees or grass enhances preference for these environments as well as their restorative quality more than decorative components like flowers and water fountains (Nordh et al., 2011). In forest landscapes, visitors have a different willingness to view forest trails with different spatial characteristics (Gao et al., 2021). And, the restoration effect and perception of forest recreation spaces on people are influenced by space types (Rui et al., 2023). The presence of water bodies is an indicator of an environment with high restorative potential, as the sound of water flowing also has a restorative effect (Ulrich,1993). Studies on the characteristics of soundscapes in space show that people prefer natural sounds over human and mechanical sounds (Irvine et al., 2009). The above studies have verified that various characteristics of the green space affect the restoration effect, but little research has been conducted on the effect of green space sense of refuge on restoration benefits.

The sense of refuge, as one of the spatial characteristics, has been mentioned in previous studies. The "Prospect-refuge" theory in landscape psychology has been proposed by Appleton, the possibility of accessing the information within the landscape through visual access, termed “prospect;” and safety through the possibility of being out of sight in a place of “refuge” (Naghibi et al., 2021). That is, man needs a place of refuge in the landscape, and this place of refuge can have better conditions so that he can observe the outside (Appleton, 1975). 'Refuge' can be understood as an enclosed and safe environment, where people can play or watch other people being active (Grahn and Stigsdotter, 2010), or people can be alone, intertwined with vegetation (Yakinlar and Akpinar, 2022a). A study has found that the ‘refuge’ is mostly related to places that are surrounded by trees and plants, it is a vital feature for perceiving a natural environment as a sheltered and safe supportive environment (Luckmann et al., 2013). In previous studies, the most important element of the "refuge" was considered to be " the park or urban open space contains many bushes (Grahn and Stigsdotter, 2010) ". It confirms that plants are indeed an important factor in creating a sense of refuge in green space. However, few studies have examined the creation of a sense of refuge by plants as well as other factors quantitatively.

"Sense of refuge" has also been explored as an important factor in the perception of the restorative environment. Studies have shown that the spatial characteristics that influence people's sense of refuge in spatial environments include coverage, enclosure, and spatial area (Ashihara, 1985). Spaces with different characteristics produce different perceptions of refuge and thus have different restorative effects, with semi-open or fully open green spaces being more effective in restoring health than fully enclosed forms (Han, 2010). Due to the different levels of sheltering, the urban park setting significantly reduced the stress of subjects, improved their attention levels, and was rated higher in terms of perceptual recovery as compared to the urban road setting (In and Hye, 2020). The natural degree of tree cover is related to the reduction in pressure. The literature on healing gardens suggests that the security of being surrounded by trees is not easy to find and enhances people's sense of refuge (Van den Berg et al., 2016). The same measurement was applied to a forest park in Denmark, where it was found that a sheltered environment was the best environment for spiritual recovery (Stigsdotter et al., 2017b). A study of the relationship between the features of community parks and mental stress again confirms the effect of the degree of shelter and the naturalness of the physical environment in different parks on mental stress relief (Nordh et al., 2009). Squares with green shades and seats were preferred to those with only sculptures or those that lacked shelters (Lu and Fu, 2019). The aforementioned studies on the spatial characteristics of restorative environments focus on the perception dimension and qualitative description. However, there are few quantitative analyses on spatial morphological characteristics.

This study aimed to investigate the sheltering characteristics of urban park activity spaces and the impact of their quantitative indicators on restoration. Green activity spaces in typical parks in high-density urban environments were selected. The differences in physiological recovery, perceived restorativeness scale (PRS) scores, the degree of sheltering, and the spatial characteristics of activity spaces were investigated to derive a quantitative range of effects of refuge on restoration outcomes.

Section snippets

Site selection and materials

Thirty-one green activity spaces in seven urban parks were selected of Harbin in China. (Fig. 1.) The urban parks that are most accessible and easy to use by city residents were selected, and the service area of the selected parks should be as large as possible. Four or five activity spaces in each urban park were selected because they are the main nodes.

Among the 31 spaces, 5 spaces are located in Zhaolin Park(7.8 ha), 4 spaces are located in Heilongjiang Forest Botanical Garden(136 ha), 4

Results of physiological signals

The results of the differences between HF/LF values and baseline values for the subjects after viewing the video are shown in Fig. 4. The scene numbers in the X-axis are arranged from smallest to largest according to the HF/LF increment. The HF/LF values increased to varying degrees after viewing the spatial videos, indicating that all sample spaces were restorative. A comparison of the increased HF/LF values shows that the mean increase in HF/LF values scored highest for space 28 (0.82) and

Urban park activity spaces with different characteristics produce different restoration effects

The first purpose of this study was to investigate whether there were differences in the restorative effects of different characteristic spaces by recording the scores of subjects on physiological indicators and the PRS scale, and the results confirmed such a hypothesis. A comparison of the results obtained by the subjects watching the videos of different scenes showed that they were recorded with differences in HF/LF, SCR, and PRS scale scores. These findings are consistent with previous

Conclusion

This paper investigates the impact of the shelter characteristics of urban park activity spaces on restoration. Based on the influencing factors of restorative landscape that have been explored in current research, this study provides a new way to build a restorative urban activity space. Typical park activity spaces in high-density urban environments were selected for the study. On the basis of the restorative nature of urban park spaces, the impact of different activity spaces on people's

Funding

This work was supported by the Central Universities [Grant No. HIT.HSS.202210]; Heilongjiang Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project [Grant number 21YSB127]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 51908170].

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Wei Zhao (First Author): Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft preparation, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Xinyu Li: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft preparation, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Project administration. Xun Zhu (Corresponding Author): Validation, Formal analysis,

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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