Recognising the benefits of greenspace for positive mental and physical health, the School of Health and Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow wanted to gain a better understanding of public parks in urban areas. It realised that while there are hundreds of public parks in towns and cities throughout Great Britain, these parks vary enormously in type, from those with simple patches of grass to those with sports facilities and cafés. It therefore launched a research project to categorise and analyse the distribution of different park types, right across the country.

This research was conducted by Dr Jessica Hepburn, Research Associate in the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit of the School of Health and Wellbeing, at the University of Glasgow. Part of a wider ‘Better Parks’ project funded by the Medical Research Council and NHMRC, the research was undertaken using Esri’s ArcGIS technology, a geographic information system (GIS) that the university was already using at a discounted rate through Jisc’s CHEST Agreement for the education sector.

First, the research team used ArcGIS Pro to consolidate and prepare relevant data, sourced from companies including Ordnance Survey, the UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology, Sustrans and Copernicus. It then used the multi-variate clustering tool in ArcGIS Pro to analyse 11,400 parks and 18 different park qualities, ranging from the availability of public toilets to the percentage tree cover. Through this approach, the university was able to automatically and objectively sort the 11,400 parks into five park types.

To verify the findings of this ArcGIS Pro analysis, the research team next created a mobile data collection app using ArcGIS Survey123 and ArcGIS Online. This app included a map of all parks in Great Britain and a series of dropdown boxes to complete. A group of people then visited a sample of parks, recorded what they could see and selected the park type that they felt best described the park they were in. In this way, the university was able to consider subjective responses and understand how people perceive parks.

The research team carried out sensitivity and specificity analysis with ArcGIS Pro to create the final dataset of park types and then linked the park data with local authority data. As a result, researchers could explore how the distribution of different park types varied across the country. The analysis revealed, for example, that Newcastle has more biodiversity parks compared to the national average, while Glasgow has more sports-dominated parks.

Novel classification system for parks nationwide
Through this project, the University of Glasgow has created the first ever, objective classification system for all urban parks in Great Britain. “This is a really novel project as no-one has ever looked at park types on this scale before,” Hepburn says. “ArcGIS Pro has helped us to create an incredibly valuable new, nationwide dataset that can be used to help answer important questions about whether public access to types of parks is equitable across the country.”

Well-informed greenspace improvement programmes
The new park types dataset can be used to inform greenspace improvement programmes that have the potential to improve human health and wellbeing, as well as increase biodiversity and support net zero targets. For instance, over 75% of York’s parks are catagorised as ‘low level’, indicating that there is huge potential for the city council to diversify and develop its greenspaces for people and nature. Across the UK, only 12% of parks are classed as sports parks, suggesting that nationwide initiatives may be needed to encourage the creation of more publicly-accessible, sports-focused parks.

Valuable data for urban planning
Local authorities will be able to make use of the new park types dataset when reviewing plans for new housing estates. They can consider which types of parks are lacking in the local area and ensure that these kinds of parks are incorporated into new development schemes. In both East Staffordshire and Bracknell Forest, over 12% of parks score zero across all feature types and cannot be categorised. While even ‘zero’ parks have some value for local people, councils can identify these parks and upgrade them by adding playgrounds, for example, to increase the variety of parks available to local people.

Simple technology-based research method
From a technical perspective, this project was not particularly complex, as the large scale, multifaceted analysis was all carried out automatically in ArcGIS Pro. “Using ArcGIS, the computations were pretty simple, but the value that we have derived from them is really great,” Hepburn says. “So many times, technology-based research projects can be overcomplicated and daunting, but this was very straightforward and offers a lot of potential for the future.”

Streamlined data verification process
The research team appreciated the close integration between ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro, which enabled it to streamline the field-based data verification process, known as ‘ground truthing’. The ArcGIS Survey123 forms were very easy to use in the field and delivered results very quickly. “In some projects, doing ground truthing can be quite time-consuming and complicated. With ArcGIS Online, though, I can just click on a button to see ground truthing results spatially, straight away.”