Co-Creating Restorative Urban Public Parks: Integrating Attention Restoration Theory and Urban Public Space Design Criteria: A Case Study in Erbil City

Urban parks play a crucial role in shaping the well-being of the community. This study integrated environmental psychology and co-creation to develop psychologically informed park design. It examined users’ psychological reactions to urban parks to establish a theoretically grounded framework for participatory design. Hence, this study integrated Attention Restorative Theory (ART) with co-creation approaches to provide conceptual clarity on translating psychological constructs into design criteria. The primary objective was to identify and rank design criteria within this integrated framework to meet user psychological demands. Also, it is hypothesized that ART could be applied through a co-creation approach. Specifically, this study administered ART scale questionnaires to 202 community members in Erbil City, and the data were analyzed using statistical analysis to provide empirical evidence for incorporating these psychological dimensions into the co-creation process. The findings reveal that validated measurement of community needs enhances participatory design effectiveness. Furthermore, the high inter-factor correlations (r = 0.79–0.88) suggest that holistic design approaches address multiple restorative dimensions simultaneously. Overall, this research demonstrates how environmental psychology can be systematically integrated into co-creation processes, thereby bridging theory and practice in urban park design. The validated framework provides practitioners with evidence-based tools for psychologically informed participatory design environments that can activate users mentally and improve cognitive function.