With climate change, it is becoming more challenging for water-limited cities to sustain historic watering levels in urban parks, leading park managers to consider changes to park designs. However, the extent to which people value parks that deviate from conventional designs featuring primarily irrigated lawn remains uncertain. We use a choice experiment to assess public preferences for different park designs in Perth, Australia. With a scale-adjusted latent class model, we identify optimal groundcover compositions for four preference classes. We find that while having some watered grass in urban parks is important, the public are also accepting of non-irrigated alternatives. Incorporating at least 40% native vegetation groundcover can both increase the utility the public derives from parks and conserve water. Park managers also have a high degree of flexibility in designing parks that vary from the optimal groundcover composition but that still deliver near-optimal benefits to communities.

随着气候变化，水资源有限的城市要维持城市公园的历史灌溉水位变得越来越具有挑战性，这促使公园管理者考虑改变公园设计。然而，人们对偏离以灌溉草坪为主的传统设计的公园的评价程度仍不确定。我们使用选择实验来评估公众对澳大利亚珀斯不同公园设计的偏好。通过按比例调整的潜在类模型，我们确定了四个偏好类的最佳地被植物组成。我们发现，虽然在城市公园浇灌草地很重要，但公众也接受了非灌溉替代品。包含至少 40% 的本地植被地被植物既可以增加公众从公园获得的效用，又可以节约用水。