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Mary Hargrove
Greenspace has the potential to be a vital resource for promoting healthy living for people in urban areas, offering both opportunities for physical activity and wellbeing. Much research has explored the objectively measurable factors within areas to the end of explaining the role of greenspace access in continuing health inequalities. This paper explores the subjective reasons why people in urban areas choose to use, or not use, local public greenspace.
In-depth interviews with 24 people living in two areas of Glasgow, United Kingdom were conducted, supplemented with participant photography and participatory methods. Data was thematically categorised to explore subjectively experienced facilitators and barriers to greenspace use in urban areas.
From the perspective of current and potential urban greenspace users, access is revealed to be about more than the physical characteristics of neighbourhoods, greenspace resources or objectively measurable features of walkability and connectivity. Subjectively, the idea of walkability includes perceptions of social cohesion at a community level and the level of felt integration and inclusion by individuals in their communities. Individual's feelings of integration and inclusion potentially mitigate the effects of experiential barriers to urban greenspace access, such as evidence of anti-social behaviour.
We conclude that improving access to greenspace for all in urban communities will require more than providing high quality resources such as parks, footpaths, activities and lighting. Physical availability interacts with community contexts already established and a holistic understanding of access is required. A key cultural component of areas and neighbourhoods is the level of social cohesion, a factor that has the potential to reinforce existing health inequalities through shaping differentiated greenspace access between subgroups of the local population.
As a consequence of such findings, lack of access to and/or use of urban greenspace become a public health issue for people living in urban areas. With regard to health inequalities between socio-economic groups, greenspace access has been implicated in social inequalities in obesity and overweight, with parks and other urban greenspaces being viewed as important components of community 'opportunity structures' for health [19, 20]. Thus conceived, the equalisation of greenspace quality and access between areas is an important public health action to reduce health inequalities [21, 22].
The data for this analysis was collected as part of the Facilitators and Barriers to Greenspace Study (FAB Greenspaces) conducted by a working group of researchers from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, the Medical Research Council (UK) Social and Public Health Sciences Unit and the local National Health Service (NHS) board (Greater Glasgow and Clyde). The study city, Glasgow, is well-resourced in greenspaces but displays significant inequalities in health both within the city and between other areas of the United Kingdom. The study explored the quality and accessibility of greenspaces across two socially contrasting areas of the city to capture subjective understandings of access and quality. The two localities had been the subject of a longitudinal study and the areas were selected from a continuum of eight socio-residential types in the city of Glasgow, the North West locality being towards the 'better' pole (as measured by census level indicators such as unemployment rates, housing tenure, occupation, and car ownership) and the South West locality towards the 'worse' pole of this continuum, but not at the extremes [33].
The two areas had similar availability of urban greenspace. Indeed the South West area (more deprived) had higher availability (34 percent living within 300 metres of greenspace of two hectares or more compared with 27 percent in the North West). However, when limited to large greenspaces that are managed, the two areas become similar. While there is little change in the North West with the percentage of residents living within 300 metres of managed greenspace greater than 2 hectares decreasing to 25 percent, the shift is more dramatic in the South West, with a drop to 24 percent [34].
For assessing the influence of subjective factors, discussion groups using participatory appraisal techniques and in-depth interviews were utilised. These enabled an in-depth exploration of features of decision-making that stemmed from not only living in a particular area but also how the biographical and social context of individuals led to decisions to use, or not use, available greenspace resources.
Pilot work with community groups was undertaken to help define the parameters and scope of the data collection in a manner that allowed local people an input. For this we used Participatory Appraisal (PA), a process that allows people to locally determine agendas in consultation. PA is an approach designed to give participants a voice rather than being defined by a rigid set of scientific methods [35]. PA enables people to share their ideas and knowledge about local conditions and allow this expertise to define the nature of local problems. The tools we used were community mapping and H diagrams. Six participatory groups were conducted. Groups were identified and contacted through community hubs. We monitored recruitment to capture a breadth of potential greenspace users, socio-economic statuses, gender and age. The six groups encompassed a pensioners group, a tenants' association and an environmental group (North West), an asylum seeker mothers group, an asylum seeker fathers group and a youth group (South West). The size of groups ranged from 8 to 20. No incentives were offered for participation in the focus groups.
Participants were provided with A1 sheets of paper and coloured markers and asked to visually map their area marking the location of urban greenspace and other community facilities they used. The subjective nature of the maps offered an important counterpoint to more objective data such as GIS as they introduced perceptual barriers such as presence (or evidence of presence) of intimidating others and individual routine based barriers and facilitators of usage.
The groups went into more depth through the use of H diagrams that allow people to list both the positive and negative aspects of their communities related to the use of greenspace and community facilities. We asked people to rate their local community greenspace and community leisure resources on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 equalled poor quality, 10 excellent). This was not intended to be an objective rating but to help focus attention on the issue and to stimulate discussion within the group. After listing the positive and negative features, participants were asked to think about changes that were possible to improve the experience and increase accessibility and usage from their perspectives.
The primary data were collected through 24 interviews in the two localities (12 in each). Interviewees were volunteers who had taken part in the previous Health and Wellbeing Survey conducted by the local NHS board. We sampled to achieve an equal balance of gender and socio-economic backgrounds. Prior to the interviews, participants were given disposable cameras and asked to take photographs of their local areas. Photographs provided a participant determined entry point into a discussion about the quality accessibility and walkability of local facilities and experiences of using urban space. Of the 24 interviewees, fifteen returned photographs prior to interviews. Those who had not were asked either about the photographs they had taken but had not yet developed or what they might take a photograph of. Even when photographs taken did not include local parks or greenspaces, the themes stimulated in discussion proved useful in framing discussion of walkability, access and decisions around the use of greenspace. No incentive was provided in recruiting participants for individual interviews.
Participants were recruited from respondents within NHS Glasgow and Clyde's Health and Wellbeing survey who had agreed to be contacted for future studies. As the community sample did not consist of patients, clients or staff of the NHS and involved no invasive procedures, the local NHS Research and Development department waivered the need for ethical approval. Nevertheless, we fore-grounded ethical research practice in the design and conduct of the study including informed consent via opt-in (with ability to leave the study at any time for no specified reason), confidentiality of participant data (pseudonyms are used in reporting), seeking voices not normally heard and stipulating that photography should not include photographs of people.
The visual data (H-diagrams and community maps) were interpreted by the research team and fed into the process of hypothesis formation and the design of interview schedules. In particular, visual data indicated processes and issues over and above those of physical quality and access which presented barriers to greenspace use such as anti-social behaviour, graffiti and conflicts with other greenspace users. The subsequent analysis of interview data was able to explore how individuals experienced and handled such barriers resulting in either the use of non-use of greenspace.
Interviews were recorded and either transcribed or had detailed analytical notes taken by one of the researchers (PS). Analytical notes were combined with materials from participatory groups and the interview schedule to develop an initial coding frame within the Nvivo software package [36]. This coding frame was subsequently refined as data was integrated into the data-set. Coding would become hierarchical with time, with variation in a given theme being coded under subheadings of a code. These subheadings could be further divided if required. Analytical codes were checked for salience with the wider research team who had access to transcripts, visual data and had attended participatory groups.
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