Abstract: As a key part of the urban green spaces, urban park plays important role in city citizens’ life. The significances of park treating as a green lung in urban area demonstrate its unique contribution to people’s life not only in physical and tangible aspects such as environment, ecology and amenity, but also in metal and intangible aspects like aesthetics, health therapy (people’s health), recreation and communication. With the life quality promoting, city inhabitants have arise higher and higher demands for their surrounding green spaces. However, during the rapid period of urban development in the past three decades in China, as the most representative of the green spaces in city area urban parks haven’t still been satisfied people’s need although the situation has progressed greatly.
This research takes threefold. First one focuses to reveal on how the city citizens use urban parks in their daily life, second one tries to learn what problems they meet during their visit and using, third one focuses on what problems and challenges of urban park need to be resolved by administrative officers and park managers. The research samples, Shanzhi Park and Qingbin Park, were selected in two districts from Harbin Metropolis of which the capital city of Heilongjiang Province according to the research designed. The methods of research carried in it were mainly based on questionnaire, interviewing and observation. This case study spent nearly four months from early March to middle June, in 2008.
The results of research found series features of park users, their visiting frequency and activity’s types. Meanwhile, it has proved the urban park can not satisfy the citizens’ needs in present days, and the most citizens wish this condition could be improved in the near future through increasing the green spaces in both numbers and sizes as the form of park. It also showed some problems and challenges faced in park design and management had to be enhanced. Finally, some suggestions aimed to improve the situation of urban spaces included constructing new urban parks and promoting the quality of park management and service have been contributed by this study. Specifically, the awareness for treating the urban park as an integral part of citizens’ welfare should be arose and educated in entire society.
Key words: Harbin Metropolis, urban park, activity, public life