Neighborhood Park for Children as a Resilient Landscape: In Terms of Its Physical Feature

Abstract

Due to the recent apartment development pattern in Dhaka city, the residential building sites are no
longer providing open spaces for children’s play areas. Scarcity of open places decreases children’s
outdoor activity, which causes them to suffer in terms of physical and mental health. This crisis can be mitigated by public open spaces like parks, plazas and playing fi elds. Therefore neighborhood parks as a resilient landscape can play an important role in children’s social, physical and psychological wellbeing at a local and proximal scale. The success of a neighborhood park for children depends on their appearance into the park at a preferred scale. This paper is focusing on whether the physical features of the parks are affecting the children’s utilization of the park and thus infl uencing the park as being resilient to its neighborhood. We studied two neighborhood parks which were designed to encourage neighborhood children to participate in outdoor activity. However, one is serving its function properly while the other one remains unutilized.
First we tried to fi nd out whether the physical features of the parks are related to the usage by children.  To gain this information i) the parks’ design features were surveyed ii) interviews were conducted with the neighborhood children and their parents, iii) the factors behind the children’s usage were compiled , iv) the relevant physical features were derived from the noted factors. These physical features of the parks under consideration were Access, Entry, Boundaries, Vegetation, Arrangement of Landscape Elements, and Internal Pathways. Secondly an analysis was made to show how the physical features are related to the park being resilient to its neighbourhood. For the analysis physical features of both parks were compared. The comparison reveals why one is acting as a resilient landscape for the wellbeing of neighborhood children and other fails to deliver its purpose.