Urban park use during the pandemic

Do shifting recreation patterns disproportionately burden socially vulnerable communities?

The COVID-19 causes significant impacts on human behaviors. People have to alter recreation patterns from indoor facilities to outdoor parks/green spaces to maintain health during the quarantine. However, the extent to which shifting recreation patterns differ across diverse communities is unknown, raising concerns about environmental justice.

In study we used a mixed-method approach to examine how urban park use change across diverse populations during the COVID-19 and explored potentially magnified impacts on socially vulnerable communities. First, we surveyed 610 urban residents across NC, USA. The survey asked their park use pre and post-COVID-19 and recorded demographic information (e.g., socioeconomic status [SES], education, race/ethnicity, and age). We used multinomial logic models to exam pre and post-use. Second, we used cell phone tracking data to document pre and post-COVID-19 park use. We used generalized linear regression to analyze relationships between pre-use, post-use and change, and SES, race/ethnicity, and park attributes of census tracts, respectively. Both results indicating the park use decreases during the pandemic, and the decline appears to be more pronounced in vulnerable communities. Survey data suggested that low-SES communities were more likely to decrease use; cell phone data showed that race/ethnicity vulnerable communities tended to decrease use.

Our results raise broader concerns about urban park use (and subsequent health impacts) during the COVID-19 and additional questions about how those negative impacts might be (inequitably) distributed across diverse communities. (#COVID19#Pandemic#Parkuse)