PARC: parks assessment rating criteria

When imagining about creating a rating tool we immediately thought in parks and the green infrastructure because they are often overlooked but they can make an average city or suburb much better.

Due to overpopulation, the world's cities are growing in both, size and number. According to the United Nations, "by 2030, a projected 730 million people will live in cities with at least 10 million inhabitants, representing 8.7 per cent of people globally" (The World in Cities 2016, p.3). Taking into account this overwhelming figures, the challenge will be to have more sustainable and liveable urban areas. Growing evidence indicates that parks and natural areas contribute to our quality of life in many ways. To a large extent, urban nature provides important social and psychological benefits to human societies, which enrich human life physically, mentally and emotionally. Several studies demonstrate that "physical and psychological benefits have been linked to green spaces through their purported effects on physical activity" (Morris cited in Lee & Maheswaran, p.212). Although modern cities have made parks a focal point of their planning, their design and services remain as open green areas that have not evolved along with the modern alteration of the functions of the city. Parks are expected to encourage wellbeing, reflect the city culture, and be attractive to all age groups and places for social engagement.

PARC, the tool we created, is a performance based assessment tool. It is intended to be used to assess the performance of best practices, sustainability and regenerative approaches in urban parks. Even though, environmental stewardship is the heart of the eco-logic of the tool reflected on the focus on reducing the impact on the environment, greenery and biodiversity. Nonetheless, the strategic objective behind the tool eco-logic is to increase the engagement of the community, usability and the wellbeing of the users. Through achieving the benchmarks considered in the tool, the project will maximize the use of valuable land within the cities to its best potential and prosper the surrounding community. The approach for logic used in our tool is the one that means “a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorisations that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices through which meaning is given to social and physical realities” (Hajer 1995, p.44).