Surveys of the use of open space usage in London

London Landscape Plans: 1829, 1900, 1929, 1943, 1951, 1969, 1976, 1988, 1990, 1992, 2000, 2004, London landscape architecture

The LCC initiated three major surveys of the use of open space in 1964 which were continued by the GLC after 1965. The data comprised a household interview survey of 2015 persons, interviews in parks with 2164 persons, and a self-administered  questionnaire which was completed by 3013 schoolchildren. The surveys were designed to test two assumptions: that the population could be treated as a series of distinctive units for planning purposes, and that the size and function of parks was related to the distance travelled from home to park. It was found that:

1. At least six different demand groups can be distinguished, ranging from ‘mothers with young children’ to ‘men and women aged over 64’.
2. Demand for outdoor recreation is of two main types: for General Recreation and for Sports. The demand for General Recreation takes two broad forms: (a) for frequent short visits to a local park; (b) for less frequent longer visits to more distant larger parks.
3. The catchment area of a park is related to its area: parks of 0,81—19.83 ha (2—49 acres) have a catchment of up to 0.4 km (0.25 miles); parks of 20.23—60.30 ha (50—149 acres) have a catchment of up to 1,21 km (0.75 miles); parks of over 60.70 ha (150 acres) have a catchment of 3.22—8.05 km (2—5 miles).

The third point, which led directly to the Greater London Development Plan (GLDP) open space strategy, quantifies the predictable fact that people are willing to travel further to visit larger parks. But there are two questionable aspects of the quantification. First, for parks of similar quality, one would expect a linear relationship between park size and park catchment. Figure 6, which represents the London County Council (LCC)/Greater London Council (GLC) findings, shows an improbable stepped relationship between park size and catchment area. Second, one would expect high quality parks to have a larger catchment than low quality parks. In many years of visiting London parks, it has been my repeated observation that some are very intensively used and others, including the new parks, very sparsely used. The GLC made no attempt to assess park quality, or visitor numbers, either in the Surveys of open space or in the 1975 Greater London Recreation Study.