Map 1. Ledges - Bell Park
Map 2. Seating spaces - Twin Fork Playground
Map 3. Seating areas - Aarey Bhaskar Park
While some of them work very well, some of them in each park do not perform as they are intended to. Indeed, some of them are not very effective because of their condition due to awkward positioning showcasing a bad example of the prospect refuge theory (fig. 1), ineffective design (fig. 2) or simply poor maintenance (fig. 3)
Figure 1. Bench giving its back to the park - Twin Fork Playground
Figure 2. Mossy concrete
ledge - Aarey Bhaskar Park
Figure 3. Bench wrongly proportioned - Bell Park
Different types of activities occurred depending on the time of the day in the three parks. People tend to exercise in the morning like walking, jogging and running, while in the evening relaxing and social activities like playing and socializing. Each spaces in each park creates spaces that allows their users to be very physically active which contributes a lot on people’s well being according to the Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project (2008) Final Project Report wrote by the UK goverenment office for science.[2] Bell Park and Twin Fork Playground both are designed to allow for pedestrian oriented development since users circulate through the hardscape but also form their own paths through the soft areas (green) on site, as they move around the space. This correlates with a sense of freedom something that lacks at the Aarey Bhaskar Park, since users are supposed to limit their circulation within the hardscape zones designed originally. This influences the well being of the Aarey Bhaskar park since according to Donovan,
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“A place is nurturing when it incorporates design qualities that inspire and invite people to do things that support their well being, not because they have to do them but because the quality of their surrounding provokes the desire to do so.”[3]
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On the spectrum of physical activities, the three places inspired playing with play structures. They allow for physical activity across the generations, family would play all together around the swing which benefitted their overall well-being.[4] In terms of sports amenities like Tennis and Baseball only the Twin Fork Playground gave those opportunities for physical activity and element of play to its users for their improved health and well-being. The two other sites didn’t have any designed sport playground.
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Psychological Health/Well-Being
Bell Park and Twin Fork Playground reside close or within a natural element (Bell Park built close to Ramsey Lake and Twin Fork built within the New Sudbury Conservation area). (Map 4& 5) This creates a setting that connects people to natural vegetation and promotes biophilia among users.
Map 4. Context map - Bell Park
Map 5. Context map - Twin Fork Playground
This has an important effect on the well-being of people since it has been proven by Flanders Cushing and Miller that connection to nature even in very little amount impact positively the happiness, health and well-being of its users.[5] On the contrary, the Aarey Bhaskar park had to be created with man-made green infrastructures since it was inserted within an urban setting. Nevertheless, it still provides the same biophilic effect as the other two parks. The three parks set up a natural environment where the users can experience the sun, wind, light, colours, materials, patterns and animals to interact with which then help reducing stress, regulate people’s mood and emotions.[6] Bell Park is strongly connected to its lake, a natural water feature that encouraged physical activity like rowing, boating, and swimming; with additional winter traditions of skating, ice fishing and more. It indirectly also provided visual and tactile experiences to all users. On the other hand, Aarey Bhaskar park has an artificially built water body limited to visual experiences since reaching it is not allowed. That prevents park users from partaking in the water’s tactile experience considered an enjoyable experience based on observations made by Whyte in the Seagram buildings.[7] Determining how adaptable a place is has an influence on their control and therefore their well-being. Bell park and the Twin Fork Playground present more characteristic of flexibility. They allow people to be adapt their space to fit their comfort. While the Aarey Bhaskar Park has more rigid features impeding on people’s appropriation of the space.
Finally, health and well-being are greatly affected in the three parks by their context. Being in a different climatic zone (Canada and India) each space present features adequate for the thermal comfort of the users. The design and material choices reflect on how they accommodate the particular climate. The two parks in Canada are designed to allow more access to sun and to block wind while the site studied in India has more vegetation and shading provided by their canopies to have most of the circulation in shade with the possibility for winds and cooler microclimates.
Conclusion:
Learning from these spaces, we can establish guidelines that can help for the development of future projects. First of all, providing seats with ledges and benches with appropriate size is important for the physical comfort of people. Those seats should always point toward nice view, at least offer protection in its back and be shaded (warm climate) or exposed to the sun (cold climate) to provide mental and thermal comfort. Attractive pathways or open spaces shaped around natural features or planted elements will not only encourage people to exercise thus boosting their physical comfort but also reduce their stress and benefits their mood through biophilic effect.
[1] Jan Gehl, Life between Buildings: Using Public Space (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011),131.
[2] UK goverenment office for science, Mental Capital and Wellbeing: Making the most of ourselves in the 21st century: Foresight (London, UK: 2008), 25.
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[3] Jenny Donovan, Designing the Compassionate City: Creating Places Where People Thrive (New York,
NY: Routledge, 2018),95.
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[4] Christopher Reeves, “Twelve Quality Criteria.” Gehl. Accessed October 1st, 2020. https://gehlpeople.com/tools/twelve-quality-criteria/.
[5] Flanders Cushing, Debra & Miller, The Therapeutic Value of People-Nature Interactions: Creating Great Places: Evidence-Based Urban Design for Health and Wellbeing (Brisbane, AU: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), 82.
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[6] Émilie Pinard, “Happiness & Well-being” – Part 2 (Online presentation, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON,
October 02, 2020).
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[7] The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, directed by William H. Whyte (1980; New York: William H.
Whyte Video, 1980), Online streaming.
Multiple elements affect the health and well-being of people in a public space. Health which at first comes through as physical health also entails mental health. A similar statement can be made about well-being where it is sometimes intended to be connected to psychological factors but can also be associated with physical well-being. Therefore, it is possible to compare Aarey Bhaskar park in Mumbai (India), Twin Fork playground and Bell Park in Sudbury (Canada) in terms of their effect on physical health/well-being and psychological well-being.
In order to support physical health and well-being, there must be infrastructures that encourages walking, standing, sitting, seeing but also extend to other activities like playing and playing sports.[1] The Aarey Bhaskar park, the Twin Fork playground and Bell park all have benches, ledges and other infrastructure in terms of sittable amenities which contribute to the physical well-being (Maps 1, 2, 3).
Physical Health/Well-Being:
The analyzed parks are situated in different social and cultural fabrics. Public spaces in the urban environment are designed to allow movement, activity and diversity however they still present invisible barriers and segregation. [1] The three parks will be further investigated in relation to their immediate context and how the design supports the user behaviour within each public space.
Context, Social fabric,
& Accessibility:
The immediate social fabric greatly informs the diversity of activities that are housed by the public spaces to fit the needs of its users. The parks located within the residential neighbourhoods (Twin Fork and Aarey Bhaskar Park) become more of a destination, providing opportunities for play, health and nurturing to the common crowd living in the immediate context while Bell park becomes more of a mediating space along the water's edge, connecting multiple residential neighbourhoods to the broader urban part of the city. Since one of the ways to promote diversity in public spaces is to build with accessibility in mind, Bell park becomes an example of this successful inclusion of its diverse users.[2] Comparing sites from two distinct cultures and social backgrounds (Mumbai, India and Sudbury, Canada) developed multiple observations on the accessibility of these parks.
A strong insight into inclusion of diverse people in these public spaces is questioned when it needs an entry fee to be able to use it as well as has a limited access time in the day. Aarey Bhaskar park located in the dense urban context of Mumbai, has an entry fee to get in, since there is a division between different social strata within the society. Furthermore, there is a set time duration for entry and use during the morning and evening, excluding certain people and restricting people from using it. In comparison, Bell park and Twin Fork playground both have free entry with unlimited access at any time of the day, becoming highly accessible to diverse background of users within the space. (Map 6. Context Map for Aarey Bhaskar park) The Aarey Bhaskar park has one point of access which is guarded for the entry fee, and is fenced up from all the other edges of the park, losing connection from the surrounding communities.
Map 6. Context Map for Aarey Bhaskar park
The park has created direct access to the residential neighbourhoods while segregating the lower-income population by a stream and boundary walls. This divide again excludes the opportunity to accommodate basic amenities that support the health and dignity of a wide range of users.[3] On the other hand, (seen above in Map 4. Context map - Bell Park and Map 5. Context map – Twin Fork Playground) the Bell park and the Twin Fork playground have multiple access points from a range of neighbourhoods and trails that intersect in these parks recognizing the diversity and the interconnectedness of users and systems.[4]
Inclusion of Activities & Users:
Inclusion of Activities & Users:
Jan Gehl mentions that the integration of various activities and functions in and around public spaces allows the people involved to function together and to stimulate and inspire one another.[5] (Map 7. Play Structures at Twin Fork Playground and Map 8. Play Structures at Bell Park) All three parks are successfully designed to engage diverse interactions amongst users by hosting activities that arise opportunities for community participation, like the community garden, the play-structures and the beach (Ramsey lake edge).
Map 7. Play Structures at Twin Fork Playground
Map 8. Play Structures at Bell Park
Inclusion within a public space has a multifaceted dimension, out of which inclusion of various users (individuals or groups), multiple age groups and different forms of activities that support them can be witnessed in all three spaces. The parks are designed to create opportunities for seating, walking and performing other activities individually or in groups throughout the site. The spaces can be reappropriated to fit the needs of the socially diverse visitors, developing forms of “sitting landscapes” as described by Jan Gehl, multipurpose elements within spaces designed to serve more than one purpose at the same time.[6] The spaces contain activities that target diverse age groups, welcoming multiple generations to interact and play within the public environment. The public spaces studied do account for inclusivity in their social context following Jan Gehl’s principles that spaces that invite a diversity of users help build a more inclusive and equitable community for all.[7] An inclusively designed park becomes a representation of the larger community, as it supports the relative activities that occur in their respective cultures. (Figure 4. Benches used to perform Yoga as an Exercise) The Aarey Bhaskar park has benches that are designed without backrests with more surface area to comfortably accommodate various sitting postures commonly performed by the users, for example, while doing Yoga Beyond human inclusion Aarey Bhaskar Park restricts the use of space to perform activities like walking the pets. This functionality of public space is differentiated from the parks in the Canadian context, (Figure 5. Types of Activities performed at Aarey Bhaskar park, Figure 6. Types of Activities performed at Twin Fork playground and Figure 7. Types of Activities performed at Bell park) since observations showed the inclusion of pets within public spaces is common and are very much a part of their culture too.
Figure 4. Benches used to perform Yoga as an Exercise
Figure 5. Types of Activities performed at Aarey Bhaskar park
Figure 6. Types of Activities performed at Twin Fork playground
Figure 7. Types of Activities performed at Bell park
Design for User Behaviours:
The design of these parks also guides the user behaviours, where the cultural context indicates how people from different ethnicities are going to use the physical space around them. The personal space theory applied on all three parks, suggests the different comfort levels while using the space and how the park’s design accommodates this diversity.[8] (Figure 8. Personal Space theory application at Aarey Bhaskar park and Figure 9. Personal Space theory application at Bell park) Aarey Bhaskar park has benches that are adaptable to the social relationships that people have in their respective context, accounting for more personal distances between people. In comparison, the Twin Fork playground and the Bell park, located in a different cultural fabric, experience users maintaining larger distances between one another.
Figure 8. Personal Space theory application at Aarey Bhaskar park
Figure 9. Personal Space theory application at Bell park
The parks are thoroughly designed to take into consideration the full range of human diversity with respect to disability and human differences in relation to that.[9] (Figure 10. Use of Ramped hardscape for circulation at Bell Park) Bell Park is built of a drastic topography taking into account the elevation changes, while maintaining full accessibility, the park is connected through a continuous series of sloped/ramped hardscape circulation. Similarly, the Twin Fork Playground and the Aarey Bhaskar park (Map 9. Use of Ramped hardscape for circulation at Aarey Bhaskar park) both prioritize sloped/ramped hardscape for the main circulation through the site instead of stairs. Hence, in accordance with Susan Goltsman’s definition of inclusive design, the parks are designed for a diversity of ways for people to participate so that everyone has a sense of belonging.[10]
Map 9. Use of Ramped hardscape for circulation at Aarey Bhaskar park
Figure 10. Use of Ramped hardscape for circulation at Bell Park
Conclusion:
Therefore, to achieve an inclusive design that supports the users of the space, it is important to recognize the need for accessibility within the public space as well as its relation to the surrounding context at the scale of the neighbourhood. For future design opportunities, the public space shall take into consideration the direct access from the street level and neighbourhoods to account for social diversity. The curation of activities and the placement and design of urban furniture allows for cultural sustainability. The design objectives would follow the configurations for one size fits one but simultaneously create spaces inclusive to all groups of users.[11]
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[1] Sam Greenspan, “The Arsenal of Exclusion,” 99% Invisible, January 1, 1970, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-51-the-arsenal-of-exclusion/.
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[2] “8 Lessons to Promote Diversity in Public Places,” RSS, accessed October 27, 2020, https://www.pps.org/article/diversityinpublicspaces.
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[3] “Equity Petal,” International Living Future Institute, December 8, 2016, https://living-future.org/lcc/equity-petal/.
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[4] Émilie Pinard, “Inclusive Agency and Accessibility.” (Online presentation, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, October 09, 2020).
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[5] Jan Gehl, Life between Buildings: Using Public Space (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011),101
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[6] Jan Gehl, Life between Buildings: Using Public Space (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011),162
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[7] Gehl Institute, Inclusive Healthy Places (NY, 2018),32.
https://gehlinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Inclusive-Healthy-Places_Gehl-Institute.pdf
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[8] Debra Flanders Cushing and Evonne Miller, Creating Great Places Evidence-Based Urban Design for Health and Wellbeing (New York, NY: Routledge, 2020), 40
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[9] “Philosophy,” Inclusive Design Research Centre, accessed October 24, 2020, https://idrc.ocadu.ca/about/philosophy/.
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[10] Émilie Pinard, “Inclusive Agency and Accessibility.” (Online presentation, Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, October 09, 2020).
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[11] Ibid