Pocket parks have become a popular intervention for improving urban residents’ quality of life. Although previous studies have investigated how park attributes contribute to user satisfaction, most assume that they have a (generalized) linear relationship. The assumption may understate the importance of parking attributes that are nonlinearly associated with park satisfaction and misestimate the effects of other attributes, yielding flawed implications for park planning and design. In this study, we employed linear regression and gradient boosting decision trees sequentially on data from Chengdu, a typical large and developing city aiming to become a Garden City by 2035, to examine the associations between park satisfaction and park attributes, which were measured on a five-point scale. Both models showed that the most important correlate of park satisfaction is entrance location, followed by footpath design, trees and shrubs, safety, flowers, convenience for social activities, and greenness. Moreover, some attributes are nonlinearly related to park satisfaction. For instance, green spaces and flowers greatly contribute to park satisfaction only when they perform well (i.e., their performance scores exceed Scale 3 of the five-point scale). The attribute of trees and shrubs affects park satisfaction substantially only when its performance is inferior (i.e., its score is lower than Scale 3). Furthermore, some seemingly unimportant attributes (such as recreational facilities and park maintenance) impose a non-trivial detrimental impact on park satisfaction when park users are extremely dissatisfied with the attributes (i.e., their performance scores are at the lowest level). The nonlinear relationships offer nuanced insights on the design of small public parks in densely developed urban areas.

中文翻译：

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考察成都公园属性与袖珍公园满意度之间的非线性关系


袖珍公园已成为提高城市居民生活质量的流行干预措施。尽管以前的研究已经调查了公园属性如何影响用户满意度，但大多数研究都假设它们具有（广义）线性关系。该假设可能会低估与公园满意度非线性相关的停车属性的重要性，并错误地估计其他属性的影响，从而对公园规划和设计产生有缺陷的影响。在这项研究中，我们根据成都的数据依次采用线性回归和梯度提升决策树，成都是一个典型的大型发展中城市，旨在到 2035 年成为花园城市，以检查公园满意度与公园属性之间的关联，这些关联以五分制衡量。两个模型都表明，公园满意度最重要的相关性是入口位置，其次是人行道设计、树木和灌木、安全性、花卉、社交活动的便利性和绿化。此外，某些属性与公园满意度呈非线性关系。例如，绿地和花卉只有在表现良好时（即，它们的性能得分超过五分制的第 3 级），才能极大地提高公园满意度。乔木和灌木的属性仅在其性能较差（即其得分低于第 3 级）时才会对公园满意度产生重大影响。此外，当公园使用者对这些属性极度不满（即他们的绩效得分处于最低水平）时，一些看似不重要的属性（如娱乐设施和公园维护）会对公园满意度产生非同寻常的不利影响。 非线性关系为密集城市地区小型公园的设计提供了细致入微的见解。