Urban Natural Parks in Portland: Nature, Networks, and Community Health

Three trends are occurring today in the United States which inspired this research. First, America is growing increasingly urbanized. Today, more Americans are living in cities than in rural environments, and this pattern is predicted to continue for the foreseeable future. Urban living has benefits, but there are also challenges for city residents including pollution, traffic, and crime. As social scientists, we need to improve our understanding of urban dwellers’ relationship with their natural environment just as biophysical scientists are focusing more and more on the impacts of urban development on the natural world. Second, Americans are spending less time recreating outdoors. There has been a documented decline of participation in nature-based recreation, likely being replaced by an increase in use of electronic media during people’s leisure time. Less contact with nature has consequences for people, perhaps especially for city dwellers who spend the majority of their time surrounded by the built environment of concrete and asphalt. It is likely that reliance on electronic entertainment has played a substantial role in decreasing amounts of physical activity. Lastly, Americans are becoming more sedentary. Today, the number of Americans who report getting no physical activity is about equal to the number who report getting regular physical exercise during their free time. Rising rates of obesity for adults and children in the U.S. have raised considerable concerns among medical and public policy professionals.;The purpose of this research was to examine how small-scale urban nature parks are affecting city residents in Portland, OR. I looked at three elements of Portland residents’ relationship with urban nature parks. First, I looked at whether there was an association between individual physical and psychological health and park use. Prior research has revealed that people who spend time recreating outdoors tend to be more physically active than people who do not. These observed higher levels of physical activity are associated with improved physical health. Time in nature settings has also demonstrated a positive effect on psychological well-being, such as reduced anxiety and improved ability to concentrate. Second, I examined whether having a nature park in their community had an effect on Portland residents’ sense of neighborhood health. Previous research suggests that having natural areas in urbanized areas directly contributes to city residents’ sense of a stronger, healthier community. Green space in cities has been associated with not only higher levels of reported satisfaction with the neighborhood, but also with higher property values, and with higher levels of retail spending. Third, I employed a social psychological model of attitude formation to evaluate Portland residents’ attitudes about their nature parks. Attitudes are particularly important for natural resource managers to understand and account for in policy decisions since management of natural resources often engages the public’s sense of personal freedoms and concerns over government regulations. Furthermore, because people in cities are so closely in contact with urban green space on a regular basis, inclusive and responsive policy requires that managers take account of public attitudes. I collected the data relating to these three elements of the relationship between urban residents and their nature parks in Portland because it is the largest city in Oregon.;I obtained the data through a general population survey, randomly distributed to residents in the Portland metropolitan area during the fall of 2010. I conducted customary social science statistical analysis, including linear regression, to assess the relationship between Portland nature parks and personal and community health. To evaluate my sample’s attitudes, I used the tripartite model of attitude formation originally developed in social psychology research. Because I was working with latent factors of attitude formation, I used structural equation modeling to assess the relationship of the observed variables to their latent factors, and the relationship among the latent factors.;My results largely agree with those of other researchers, though I approached the question of physical health and nature recreation slightly differently. For my work on physical health, rather than ask about physical activity and infer health outcomes, I asked directly about physical health. I tested two hypotheses. One hypothesis was that there would be a positive association between self-reported physical health and park use, and the other tested for a positive association between park use and psychological health. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).