Portuguese youth preferred multifunctional public parks with abundant green space and amenitiesGreen spaces provide significant physical, mental, and social health benefits, particularly during childhood and adolescence. However, adolescents use green spaces infrequently. Therefore, this Portuguese study collected adolescents’ perspectives on green spaces so that urban planners might take these perspectives into account when developing and maintaining public parks in urban environments.
This study utilized focal group interviews with adolescents (age 15-16) from the Porto Metropolitan Area. The participants included an equal mix of boys and girls who were randomly selected from the highest and lowest socioeconomic strata from urban areas of Porto. The researchers collected group interview data from seven focal groups—four with high-SES, 3 with low-SES--totaling 34 participants. The semi-structured interviews asked each group to discuss how they used green spaces, what they perceived as the benefits of green spaces, and which green space features they preferred. The researchers transcribed these interviews and grouped like responses through thematic analysis to portray the perfect parks for the city’s adolescents.
Frequency of Use: Most Porto adolescents visited green spaces regularly: daily, weekly, or several times per month. Usage peaked during the summer holidays. In summer, youth primarily congregated in the city’s largest park; during the school year, they mostly used smaller parks closer to school or home. Females reported daily use more than males, and lower SES youth reported more year-round use of parks. Activities: Youth primarily used parks for physical activity and exercise (walking, running, biking, skating, group sports). While some youth preferred being alone in parks, parks also supported youths’ time with friends and with family members. Less frequent uses included walking pets, meals, meeting new people, and creative and cultural activities. Types of green space used included free public parks and gardens, semi-natural green space, and paid public parks and gardens. Perceived benefits included respiratory health, well-being and relaxation. Barriers and preferences: Adolescents in the study supported more public parks distributed more evenly across the city. However, the aesthetics of these spaces was important to them: parks and green spaces needed adequate space, vegetation, equipment, and maintenance to be worth visiting. Barriers to use included the perception of insecurity, inadequate cleaning and maintenance in the parks located in low-SES areas, and to some degree price (preference for more free parks). Multifunctionality was a key theme which cut across the study: participants valued parks with an abundance of green space (and isolation from buildings and houses) for restoration, sports fields and equipment, diverse vegetation, flora and fauna, paved trails, and cultural activities available.
Overall, the Portuguese adolescents in this study communicated preferences for more nearby green spaces that offer safe opportunities for physical activity, relaxation, restoration, and social interaction. Based on adolescents’ perceptions of public green spaces, the authors highlighted seven interventions for urban planners to increase youths’ use of public parks: increasing the size and number of public green spaces within 5-15 minutes of residential locations; improving green spaces by enhancing their multifunctionality for athletic, physical, cultural, and creative pursuits; addressing the emotional and aesthetic affordances of green spaces, particularly for female adolescents; creating clean, safe, and well-maintained green spaces that encourage social interactions (paved trails, benches, picnic tables); account for adolescents’ different preferences, based on their genders and socioeconomic status; and leveraging social media and websites to encourage youth to use spaces more extensively. In short, the authors call for urban planners and decision-makers to prioritize youth perspectives in urban designs, ideally by including youth in parks planning through participatory forums and youth advisory councils.
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