Contribution of Accessible and Well Design Green Spaces for the Well Being of Senior Citizens

A growing number of articles have identified and reported the benefits and importance of urban green spaces for improving human well-being, but there is a significant knowledge gap regarding the impact of urban green spaces on the subjective well-being of older adults. The included studies aim to capture the benefits of various features of urban green spaces in meeting or enhancing the subjective well-being needs of older adults. The results of our review further support the existence of a strong link between older adults’ subjective well-being and various features of urban green spaces, providing new insights for future in-depth re-examination and policy development. Furthermore, the relationship between urban green spaces and older adults’ subjective well-being depends not only on the urban green spaces themselves but also on the characteristics of the older adult population that uses them. As demographic changes abound, landscape planners should increase their understanding of both elderly people’s preferences concerning nature-based recreation and approaches to consider those preferences in planning. This study aims to synthesize existing knowledge about elderly people’s preferences, namely, how they interact with green spaces, what landscape characteristics they prefer or dislike, and how practitioners can improve planning to better meet elderly people’s needs. We find that published studies focus primarily on elderly people’s recreational activities in urban parks. Across different contexts, elderly people seem to have common preferences: landscape features that are natural, aesthetic, comprehensible, and diverse, with accessible and well-maintained infrastructure and facilities. Moreover, interactions between people and nature may affect the relative importance levels of the preferences. We recommend that landscape planning practitioners consider both scientific evidence and local conditions that could affect elderly people’s preferences, and explore the degree to which design options may fulfill these preferences. Further research is needed to explore differences in preferences between urban and rural dwellers, to quantify preferences, and to enhance understanding of elderly people’s emotional ties with nature.