Assessing Inclusive Park Design in Ankara, Türkiye: A Comparative E-PIDI Analysis of the Capital National Garden and National Botanical Garden

Urban parks can promote equitable access to recreation, nature and social interaction when their design responds to diverse physical, sensory, cognitive, social and environmental needs. However, existing park-accessibility assessments often focus on spatial proximity, regulatory compliance or individual facilities and rarely integrate these dimensions with climatic support within a transparent, multidimensional evaluation framework. Addressing this gap is important for identifying design conditions that may restrict equitable park use even where formal access is available. This study adapts and extends the Park Inclusive Design Index as the Enhanced Park Inclusive Design Index (E-PIDI) and applies it comparatively to two intentionally selected, very large multifunctional parks in Ankara, Türkiye. The framework comprises 38 indicators across Motor Accessibility, Sensory Perceptibility, Cognitive and Wayfinding Support, Social Inclusivity and Thermal Comfort Potential. Two authors independently completed the field ratings, and their unrounded arithmetic means were used in the analysis; pooled linearly weighted Cohen’s kappa was 0.675. Dimension weights were derived from pairwise comparisons completed by eight experienced academics using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The aggregated matrix was highly consistent (CR = 0.0177). Motor Accessibility received the highest weight (38.09%), followed by Cognitive and Wayfinding Support (22.31%), Social Inclusivity (22.29%), Thermal Comfort Potential (9.35%) and Sensory Perceptibility (7.95%). The National Botanical Garden obtained a higher composite score (0.7393) than the Capital National Garden (0.6671), with higher Motor Accessibility, Sensory Perceptibility and Thermal Comfort Potential scores; Cognitive and Wayfinding Support and Social Inclusivity were equal. The ranking remained stable across equal, expert-specific, leave-one-expert-out and rater-specific sensitivity scenarios. The application demonstrates E-PIDI’s use as an intensive diagnostic comparison tool for large, spatially complex parks, complementing its potential use for broader multi-park benchmarking.