Urban Park Use, Quality Evaluation, and Resident Satisfaction Indicators in the City of Zahedan, Iran

Abstract

Urban parks have social, economic, and ecological roles, and play important role in improving the quality of life and community development. This study investigates the usage rate of urban parks by residents in the city of Zahedan, Iran, and evaluates the quality of them in terms of furniture and facilities, in this survey study participants are 520 of Zahedani residents divided into two ordinary (n=500) and expert groups (n=20) selected from the population using Cochran's formula. Number of evaluated urban parks was 101 distributed in five regions of the city. A survey questionnaire was designed for collecting data from participants. Results showed that Zahedani residents use urban parks once a week (70%). Also we found out that the quality of urban parks in Zahedan was poor. Our findings revealed that “public toilet facilities”, “green spaces”, “safety”, “accessibility”, “welfare facilities”, “trails”, and “equipments” are most important indicators for evaluating resident satisfaction with public urban parks. Finally, our results reported that there was a significant relationship between residents’ satisfaction level and standard quality of urban parks.