Lessons from the Distribution Pattern of Urban Parks and Factors that Contribute to Control COVID-19 Outbreak in Neighborhood Design

The novel coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading over South Asia at alarming rates. In Sri Lanka, urban cities like Colombo with high population densities are challenged to control the spread of the virus due to the unprecedented clustering of people in public parks. However, allowing access to such spaces is a vital requirement to ensure the health and wellbeing of the neighborhood. Since the gatherings and crowding in open parks are inevitable, the risk of being infected is irrepressible. Thus, it is of paramount importance to study the physical distribution of parks and playgrounds in dense neighborhoods of the Colombo metro area to evaluate their user attraction and risk index, in order to reinvent strategies to ease the pandemic outbreak. This study investigates five main variables: neighborhood density (ND), park values (PV), user mobility (UM), park capacity (PC) and park extent (PE) of 34 public parks and playgrounds located within the Colombo metro area. Each variable was visualized using Geographical Information System and space syntax and further correlated using SPSS software. PVs are designed to numerically interpret user attraction towards selected settings. From the relationship between each variable with park values, it was identified that large-scale parks with multifunctional facilities attract more users than small pockets of neighborhood playgrounds. Thus, study findings strongly suggest that parks and playgrounds should be distributed in more isolated pockets to absorb the threshold of park users within a neighborhood bubble, while discouraging visitors from outside the bubble. Through fragmenting the large scale municipal and district parks and facilitating the local parks of less than 0.05 square kilometers, the attraction of users can be controlled. Overall, moderation of facilities can reduce 41% of the total attraction to parks. The even distribution of facilities encourages more utilization of neighborhood, community, and pocket parks, which leads to the creation of neighborhood pockets. The study suggests that suitable planning and design recommendations regarding park profiles can encourage small neighborhood parks to promote livability through easing the outbreak.