Mini Parks Increasing Physical Activities in Urban Settlement

Monali Patel, Sarvajanik Collage of Engineering & Technology, Surat, Gujarat, India; Zarana Gandhi ,Sarvajanik Collage of Engineering & Technology, Surat, Gujarat, India; Bhasker Vijaykumar Bhatt ,Sarvajanik Collage of Engineering & Technology, Surat, Gujarat, India

Mini parks, Physical activity, Recreation activity, urban settlement

In the fast developing cities today, the land availability is scarce for allocating it as a park. One of a solution to this situation is to convert the left-over (vacant) spaces into a park. It will increase the physical as well as recreation activities in the urban settlement. One of the primary criteria for the parks is to have them within a walk able distance. Such parks can be of two kinds: playgrounds and community gardens. These also can be named as mini-parks and for developing such parks serving a common interest, an active support is required from within the Commonwealth and the Government. These small places or mini parks can serve a dual purpose such as recreation as well as the generation of economic activity to a smaller extent. The paper discusses over health aspects in an urban area for the citizens followed by basics of and some of the cases related to novel efforts in developing mini-parks. The cases discussed are of (A) Paley Park, NY-USA, (B) Mini-park in Higashi-Ikebukuro of Tokyo and (C) Ghost train park of Lima. Authors attempt for a comparative analysis of these three parks. Discussion follows a proposal of developing a recently closed down project of Sky-bus in Goa as a mini-park. The authority acquired land for the Sky-bus corridor, wherein the spaces at different interval can serve for creating mini-parks.
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Paper ID: GRDCF001004
Published in: Conference : Recent Advances in Civil Engineering for Global Sustainability (RACEGS-2016)
Page(s): 8 - 13