CITY PARKS, PERCEPTION AND URBAN VALUE

Green urban areas with good soundscape and nature can offer restoration from daily noise and stress in the surrounding residential areas. A simple pragmatic method is presented to quantify the restorative value of urban parks. The paper presents results from surveys into the appreciation of parks in the city of Rotterdam and the relation with restoration value. We found that in assessing the value of urban parks both internal qualities, such as soundscape and nature, and distance to surroundings are important. The method for rating quiet urban areas still needs development and improvement, but it can be useful to epidemiologists in studies into health and can support urban planners that aim at good environmental quality.