Image Source: Helmut Ignat
In addition to surveys and interviews, our group wanted to evaluate the ways that COVID-19 has affected park utilization. The park was observed through the Green City Lab live stream throughout the week and at varying times. This livestream features a 24 hour video of the northwestern portion of the park. This data was not used to draw conclusions about regular/annual visitor data as the park was only observed for a short period of time, collection dates overlapped with various military restrictions, and the view only encapsulates a portion of the park. Increased self-isolation and social distancing restrictions could potentially cause a decrease in park visitors, but the shift to working from home and gym closures could have also contributed to an increase in visitors. The limitations of the live stream to a corner of the park as well as the lack of a baseline number of visitors prevented our group from making development recommendations based on the usage data we collected. This information, however, can be used to compare to park usage number once the virus threat has decreased in order to better understand the impact the virus had on park utilization, and provide an argument for preserving such spaces for use as safe recreational opportunities during pandemics.
The park visitors were identified and catalogued. The number of visitors, their location (perimeter of the park or inside the park), the day of the week, weather conditions, the time, and any major military restrictions were recorded. Once data collection ended, we quantitatively analyzed the number of visitors by these variable time windows and weekday vs weekend. Additionally, as the pandemic progressed and restrictions increased, we looked for trends in the data to reinforce the theory that the park is used for safe recreation.
Visitors in the Park, From: the Green City Lab Livestream
In addition to recording the time and day of week information, the weather and light conditions were documented. Using the weather conditions, we looked for trends in park attendance and utilization. We assumed that park attendance will decrease in low light and adverse weather conditions, so making notes of such allowed us to filter the data and remove possible outliers. Additionally, the quality of the video decreased as the sun set, so the reliability of data collection diminished. To combat this, we did not collect data past 8pm. Nighttime visitors also sometimes carried flashlights or had bike-lights which helped us identify them, but visitors without lights were difficult to identify.
Visitors in the Park at Night, From: the Green City Lab Livestream
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