Outcome-specific park-catchment assessment of age-supportive neighborhood parks using field audits and street-view imagery
Journal
Landscape and Ecological Engineering
ISSN
1860-1871
Date Issued
2026-08-28
Author(s)
Abstract
For older residents, a neighborhood park is not only the land inside its boundary. It is reached through nearby streets, seen from sidewalks and entrances, and used through paths, planting, seating, shade, and other interior features. When these components are collapsed into one park-exposure measure, an NDVI buffer, access score, street-view greenness index, or park audit score can be mistaken for the same environmental claim. We asked whether the same environmental measures explained two outcomes that should not be assumed to share a pathway: self-reported sleep quality and subjective memory. To test this, we linked 774 adults aged 55 years and older living within 500 m of 27 neighborhood parks in Taichung, Taiwan, to three sets of park-catchment measures: neighborhood NDVI and Walk Score®, street-view visual composition, and field-audited park-interior design. Park interiors were audited for senior-friendly design domains. The surrounding catchments were measured separately from above, using NDVI and Walk Score®, and at eye level, using semantic segmentation of approximately 8000 Google Street View images. Decision trees were used as an exploratory screening step for non-linear candidate predictors; the retained variables were then tested in ordinal GEE models that accounted for clustering within the 27 park catchments. Sleep and subjective memory were associated with different environmental profiles. Sleep quality was the outcome most consistently tied to greenness: higher sleep scores were associated with higher catchment NDVI, higher Walk Score®, greater visible vegetation, higher Streetscape values, and higher park-interior Nature scores. Subjective memory followed a different pattern. It was associated with Landformscape and with audited Safety, Physical-feature, and Aesthetic-quality scores, but not with catchment NDVI; visible greenness was inversely associated with subjective memory after adjustment. These findings caution against grading parks with a single greenness or access metric: in this sample, sleep and subjective memory were associated with different parts of the park-catchment environment. Park assessment for older adults should therefore keep interior design, approach streets, and neighborhood greenness analytically separate until the outcome is specified. © The Author(s) under exclusive licence to International Consortium of Landscape and Ecological Engineering 2026.
Subjects
Aging in place
Eye-level greenness
Semantic segmentation
Senior-friendly design
Subjective memory
Walk Score
Publisher
Springer
Type
journal article