Social relationships and patterns of use in urban public spaces in China and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Public spaces are social places that enhance social life and foster social interactions.However, there is a lack of analysis of the patterns of use by people in various types of social relationships. Observational data on four public spaces in Suzhou, China, and Sheffield, UK, assessed users' personal characteristics, activities and spatial occupancies in public spaces.Site factors were not related to personal characteristics, but age and group size were culturally different. Activities and spatial occupancies differed between unaccompanied and accompanied users. Compared to single users, users in groups tended to participate in multiple activities at once, and their activities included more interactions. Single users' spatial distributions conformed to the edge effect, but users in groups were evenly distributed in the spaces. Three types of social relationships were defined: Intimate Pair, Intimate Group and Social Group. Intimate Pairs were most likely to use mobile phones and use private spaces, Intimate Groups were most likely to be talking and sitting and to use park amenities, and Social Groups were most likely to be playing games and relaxing in spacious open areas.Regarding spatial occupancy, Intimate Pairs and Social Groups were most likely to use the middle and peripheral regions, and the Intimate Groups tended to be evenly distributed in the spaces. The results of this study stress the importance of designing public spaces for the types Jingwen Cao& Jian Kang: Cities

Effect of Space Configurational Attributes on Social Interactions in Urban Parks

“…The results in this study indicate that people's behaviors in parks are affected by park design. Depth and integration have been identified as the influential attributes, which agree with the results in the literature [26,33,35]. Higher integration value and lower depth lead to higher accessibility and lower cost of use.…”

“…In this method, the distance between two people was used to categorize social relationships into four groups, including intimate distance (0 to 45 cm), personal distance (46 cm to 1.3 m), social distance (1.31 to 3.75 m), and public distance (>3.75 m). For activities that comprised more than two people, the average distance within a group was suggested by Cao and Kang for social interaction classification in urban open spaces [35]. Three social relationship types were identified, including: (1) intimate (intimate pair), (2) personal (intimate group), and social (social group).…”

“…The observation of social interactions in urban parks was carried out in November 2020. Previous studies have indicated that the type and duration time of activities depended on the space type [35,36]. Therefore, in this study, the accessible spaces in the parks were first classified into two categories: pathways and activity zones linked by pathways (plaza or playground).…”

Research on Constructing a Healing Environment for the Street Spaces of a High-Density City: Using Street Spaces in Macao’s Old City Area

“…In Amsterdam, a proposed plan in is employed to reduce parking spaces year by year and utilize free parking spaces for trees and sidewalks [ 23 ]. Similarly, the urban cultural background will affect the age and group size of the users in the street space, and the content of the space used and the location of the space occupied by the three types of social relations (intimate group, intimate group and social group) will be reflected differently under the influence of different urban cultures [ 24 ].…”

Percepción del espacio público: pérdida de atractivo en el Corredor Urbano Comercial Avenida de los Héroes de Chetumal, Quintana Roo, México

“…Este estudio tiene por objetivo conocer la percepción del ciudadano sobre los elementos de mayor incidencia en la pérdida del atractivo del Corredor Urbano Comercial de la Avenida de los Héroes (CUCAH). El interés de realizar esta investigación científica parte del hecho que en la literatura académica se señala que a nivel mundial se vienen experimentando cambios y transformaciones como consecuencia de los efectos generados por fenómenos económicos, sociales, culturales y tecnológicos, los cuales producen alteraciones en el comportamiento y uso de las personas en el espacio público (Segovia, 2007;Cao & Kang, 2019;Moravcová, Jiri, Pekna, Moravcova & Novakova, 2020), de los cuales, muchos derivan en el efecto de abandono y pérdida de la centralidad. En este contexto, la pregunta de investigación que guía el desarrollo de este trabajo es ¿Qué origina la pérdida del atractivo del CUCAH?, refiriéndose no únicamente a la dimensión físico-edificada, sino a todos los atributos que hacen de un espacio público urbano comercial sea exitoso.…”