Evaluation of Residents Perception about Socioeconomic and Environmental Impacts of Urban Green Spaces of Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

In a country like Pakistan, the presence of urban greening and parks are very essential for the well-being of its citizens. The resident’s awareness about urban green spaces (UGSs) is essential as it would not only help towards a healthier environment, but prepare residents to manage these spaces efficiently through local resources. This formulates the rationale behind current research work. This research is aimed at studying about the resident’s perception for UGS’s attributes like environmental, negative and positive. Another major focus of this research is to analyze the socioeconomic differentials and its consequent impacts on resident’s perception about urban green spaces, which has been probed with the help of MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance). In this regard the primary data of 223 visitors were collected by random sampling method from eight major parks of Lahore, Pakistan. The findings of this survey of resident’s perception have shown that mostly male, single, low and middle class, and educated people visit the urban green spaces and they are highly indebted by their environmental and health benefits. For the selected characteristics of urban green areas, the resident’s perception has revealed that there exists an insignificant relationship with age and marital status of the respondents while the most significant relation was shown by the residents who visited the UGSs regularly as ‘ρ’ value is less than the set significance level of 0.05. This study has highlighted a dire need of such UGSs in the city of Lahore which is known to be the “City of Gardens”.  This could raise the spirits of administrators, city managers and planners to take immediate action in this regard.