Assessment of User’s Preferred Activities and Its Correlation with Landscape Elements in Urban Green Spaces

Urban green spaces are important components that have an impact on the people, their behavior and liveability. This paper aims to study the individual and combined influences of the different landscape elements on the urban environment and their impact on the nature and amount of usage and activities performed in the green spaces. A questionnaire survey was conducted to assess user’s preference of nature of activities and the preference for associated landscape elements with 75 numbers of pan-Indian urban subjects with access to urban green spaces. An inferential analysis was done and it was found that walking and strolling were the most preferred active and passive recreational activities, respectively. For active recreation 39.5% of passive users and 48.4% of active users preferred groundcover. For passive recreation, groundcover and seating elements were equally preferred by 30.6% of passive users and 32.1% of active users. Urban landscape designing largely consists of facilitating and not motivating user activities. This study will help landscape architects and urban designers by making the designs relevant and also improve people’s physical and mental health by increasing their participation in various recreational activities in an urbanizing developing country.