The challenge of enhancing accessibility to recreational landscapes

Abstract

In recent years the relationship between outdoor recreation and public health has been increasingly acknowledged. One way planners and policymakers can promote physical activity within their administrative areas is to stimulate more people to engage in outdoor recreation. However, a prerequisite for outdoor recreation is accessibility to recreational landscapes. In current research, the terms ‘access’ and ‘accessibility’ are defined and used in different ways. In order to provide planners and policymakers responsible for urban green structure with useful tools for promoting outdoor recreation, there is a need to find ways for accessibility to be measured and mapped in ways reflecting the different dimensions of perceived accessibility. The literature review identifies the key dimensions describing accessibility to recreational landscapes and the related attributes that can be assessed when studying peoples' perceived accessibility. Two main dimensions of perceived accessibility are identified: physical accessibility (related to attributes in the physical landscape), and cultural, social, or sociopsychological accessibility (related to attributes of the observer). The author concludes that researchers, planners, policymakers, and others aiming to assess accessibility to a recreational landscape need to make conscious choices regarding which dimensions and attributes of perceived accessibility should be included based on the purpose of their assessment.

Keywords:

• accessibility
• landscape perception
• outdoor recreation
• planning tools
• promoting physical activity

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Michael Jones and Catriona Turner for their assistance throughout the publication process. Editor Michael Jones has made a substantial contribution to our manuscript. We also thank the reviewers for their valuable input, which contributed to an improvement of the article.