Measurement of environmental factors affecting user satisfaction in urban parks

Since urban parks are considered as public spaces and are the basic rights of citizens, consideration of the views and demands of citizens is a requirement for better design for them. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review architectural approaches and approaches in relation to urban public spaces and parks, a relationship that strengthens the role of these spaces in increasing the satisfaction of users and it is based on the main issue that the design which is based on users opinions, can improve their satisfaction. Descriptive-survey method is used for this research. The population of this study was randomly selected from park users of Babol city in different hours and days. After assessing the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, the relationship between variables was obtained by using the correlation test, Mann Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests through SPSS software. The results indicate that the six factors of structural-physical, aesthetic, meaning, security, behavioral patterns, and aggregation are effective in user satisfaction and security factor is the most important factor in users’ perspective. This suggests that feeling safe and existence factors such as adequate lighting, presence of guard, access control, support for activities, park equipment safety, management and maintenance and surveillance are the most impact in shaping users mental image. There is also a significant and positive relationship between some of the six factors. Among these relationships, the two factors of structure and aesthetics with r = 0.417 have the greatest effect. In fact, physical-structural, security, meaning and aggregation factors affect the three factors and aesthetic factor affects the two factors. Also, behavioral patterns with impact on a physical-structural factor has the least impact on other factors.