Urban green space quality and older adult recreation: an international comparison

ABSTRACT

Association between urban green space quality and older adult outdoor recreation may vary across contrasting community contexts, but few international comparisons have been made. Data on older adult outdoor recreation and the quality of thirty-two (32) green spaces were collected using established tools (Systematic Observation of Play and Recreations in the Community and the Community Park Audit Tool) adapted for the cities of Sydney, Singapore and Dhaka between February to May 2017. Descriptive statistics and Poisson regressions were used to analyse the association between older adult recreation and measures of green space quality in each city. Higher quality green space was associated with more sedentary activity (β = 0.02, p < 0.005) and walking (β = 0.034, p < 0.005) after adjusting for differences between cities. Further tests suggested both sedentary activity and walking were higher in parks scoring more favourably on safety. Vigorous recreational activities were more common in parks scoring more favourably on accessibility, safety and landscape quality. Differences in associations between older adult recreation with each quality indicator were observed between cities. Interestingly, the expected association between quality and recreational activity could be different where high-quality urban green spaces are abundant (e.g. Singapore).

KEYWORDS:

• Urban green space
• low and middle-income countries
• quality
• outdoor recreations
• ageing

This article is related to:

Asian city futures: research to help inform spatial form and health

Disclosure statement

There was no potential conflict of interest to report.

Additional information

Funding

The study was conducted with the support of the International Postgraduate Tuition Award and University Post Graduate Award from the University of Wollongong Australia, awarded for the PhD research. Xiaoqi Feng was supported by an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (#1148792). Thomas Astell-Burt was supported by an NHMRC Boosting Dementia Future Leadership Fellowship (#1140317).

Notes on contributors

Faysal Kabir Shuvo

Faysal Kabir Shuvo has obtained PhD degree from the University of Wollongong. Faysal Kabir Shuvo’s research has a clear focus on the inequitable distribution of urban green space quantity and quality relating to social and active ageing. His overall interests are in urban green space planning, promotion of active ageing, and environmental justice in contrasting international settings. He has working experience in both research and professional urban planning jobs. Faysal is skilled in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial data science and exploratory statistical analysis.

Xiaoqi Feng

Xiaoqi Feng is the Associate Professor of Urban Health and Environment and an NHMRC Career Development Fellow in the UNSW School of Public Health and Community Medicine.

Thomas Astell-Burt

Thomas Astell-Burt is the Professor of Population Health and Environmental Data Science and an NHMRC Boosting Dementia Research Leadership Fellow at the University of Wollongong (UOW).