Assessment of sustainability and health promotion of three public parks in Poland’s Pomerania Region

Abstract

The new tendency in Urban Green Spaces (UGS) design is to establish sustainable and health-promoting public parks – often described as the new (second) generation of public parks. The possibilities of wider implementation of the new generation of public parks are presented as an example of a recently constructed or revitalized park in the Pomerania region. This paper discusses three public parks in the Pomerania region – Public Municipal Parks in Rumia, Reda and Wejherowo. In this study, the main research question was whether the selected parks promote the well-being of inhabitants as well as sustainability. The parks were assessed using a standardized tool – the universal standard of health-promoting urban places. All three parks are places for physical, mental and social restoration of neighborhood communities, as well as ecological education. Thus, they can be regarded as health-affirming urban places