Urban parks through people’s new lens: Opportunities behind COVID-19 for public spaces’ policies in Costa Rica.

Abstract

Public spaces played a crucial role during COVID-19; they contributed to meeting social needs and physical activities and positively affected users' health (Lin et al., 2023). However, each country approached its restriction measures during the lockdown differently. In Costa Rica, access to many open spaces such as beaches, National Parks, squares and urban parks was limited or denied. The access to large urban parks within the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) was strongly reduced during 2020 and 2021; sometimes, there was no access at all; others, a visitation schedule was enforced for weekdays, and no visitation was allowed during the weekends.

This study focused on the three large urban parks within the GAM; it aims to analyse user’s visitation patterns and place appreciation one year after the government lifted COVID-19 restrictions. Research suggests that urban residents might have a reappraisal of green local spaces in the early stages of the pandemic (Alizadehtazi et al., 2020). This research intends to understand if urban park users perceive those places as more valuable today than before the lockdown and to reflect if any change in planning policies must be implemented to embrace that fresh lens. 

This research is mainly based on 8575 in situ surveys carried out between January and August 2023 in the largest urban parks of the GAM: La Sabana, La Paz, and Parque del Este. The sample included teenagers from 14 years old, adults and people over 65. Additionally, between 2018 and 2019, just months before the spread of COVID-19, our team conducted an exploratory study in the same urban parks to examine visitation patterns and user perceptions with a sample of 491 individuals. In the 2023 survey, we repeated the same questions as the previous study and added specific enquiries regarding visitation and perceptions before and after the pandemic. Therefore, this paper analyses participants' new perspectives while considering views from the same places before the outbreak.

The findings suggest that COVID-19 was a game changer in people's visitation patterns and appreciation of large urban parks within the GAM. The results show that 50% of participants state that they visit the park more often today than before the outbreak; that behaviour was even higher in teenagers, with 56% assured of having increased their visitation frequency; 48% of the sample shows that the appreciation for those spaces is higher now than before the pandemic, this feeling was slightly higher for women. Individuals over 65 years were the group that missed the urban parks the most; 88.6% mentioned that they missed open spaces or they were looking forward to them being opened. These findings contribute to understanding the effect of COVID-19 in Latin American public spaces. Although more research is needed, some examples show an increase in visitation patterns in local parks in Brazil after the lockdown (Freires et al., 2022) or a decrease in Puerto Rican parks by 2021 (Luengo-Duque and Crespo, 2022). In Costa Rica, despite the self-reported increase of visitation post-pandemic, planning policies in urban parks face challenges; private cars are the dominant mode of transport to get there, there are safety concerns, infrastructure and accessibility issues. Public policies should focus on promoting more accessible and secure urban spaces aiming to ensure a better quality of life for its residents. For instance, how to promote a richer intergenerational exchange by taking advantage of teenagers' increase in visitation? Which activities would keep the interest of older people in those spaces? How to promote new ways of commuting and reduce access inequalities? Public spaces are volatile places (Jacobs,1961); therefore, new users’ attitudes also bring new opportunities that cannot be missed.