A Study on the Usage Status of Senior-Friendly Parks in the City Center Based on Accessibility and Recognition

As medical and scientific technologies are rapidly advancing due to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the world's older population continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.As a result, the government is pushing to create more parks among senior cultural facilities for the well-being of older citizens.However, older adults have difficulties using many of these senior-friendly parks because most were not designed with consideration for seniors with diminished cognitive abilities.Additionally, there is a lack of research on senior-friendly parks compared to other living SOC facilities.Therefore, this study investigated the accessibility and recognition of senior-friendly parks based on a spatial hierarchy analysis of their locations.In addition, this study examined their usage status to establish basic data for future senior-friendly park location planning.Among the seven senior-friendly parks currently available to the public in Korea, four urban parks built after 1990 that are larger than small parks were selected as the targets.To analyze the correlation between senior-friendly parks and surrounding facilities, a 1km radius was set around the parks to examine their accessibility and recognition using space syntax.The main findings are as follows.1) Older adults face fewer difficulties in using senior-friendly parks with high accessibility and recognition, which should be considered in designing such parks.2) Considering ease of access to nearby residential and welfare facilities can help improve the usage of these parks.3) Accessibility and recognition should be considered when determining the location of senior-friendly parks, and space syntax analysis is an effective tool for this purpose.However, there are limitations arising from analyses based on plane data, so further research is needed to address them.