The increase in the academic literature concerning the potential impacts that urban park systems can have over the life course of urban residents is beginning to be recognized by professionals in the fields of community quality of life studies, population health and in health geography. Typically urban spaces within Canada are designed to include a component of open space which can facilitate the recreation needs of residents. Within the City of Saskatoon neighbourhoods have such spaces in the form of neighbourhood parks, which are meant to facilitate passive or active recreation. Parks also provide open spaces of vegetation cover as opposed to the concrete and structural components of the city. Parks are meant to positively contribute to the residents lives and to the neighbourhood in which they are located. <p>In community quality of life studies, open spaces, such as parks along with other neighbourhood attributes, are often used to gauge residents perceptions of their immediate surroundings. The Saskatoon Quality of Life Project conducted by the Quality of Life Module at the Community-University Institute for Social Research (CUISR) conducted such a study in 2004 in which park spaces were related alongside other neighbourhood features such as transportation and social activities in order to capture residents perceptions of their community quality of life. <p>The purpose of this study is to look at how residents of differing socio-economic status (SES) neighbourhoods (one high SES and one low SES) perceive their neighbourhood park spaces and if their perceptions affect their perceived quality of life. In order to capture residents perceptions of their neighbourhood parks, face-to-face interviews were conducted with residents. In addition to the resident interviews, interviews were conducted with key informants as well as statistical analysis of secondary data from the 2004 Saskatoon Quality of Life Project was carried out. Results showed residents of different neighbourhood SES status shared common perceptions of their park spaces as well as how neighbourhood parks contributed to their quality of life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-04262007-211040 |
| Date | 27 April 2007 |
| Creators | Lynch, Karen |
| Contributors | Reed, Maureen, Noble, Bram F., Hackett, Paul, Williams, Allison |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-04262007-211040/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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