What makes a successful industrial heritage park?—China's experience based on the ecosystem cultural services perspective

Abstract

<abstract> <p>The transformation of downtown industrial spaces is prevalent in cities in China and the global South. Because of economic development and social transformation, former factories no longer carry out production activities and are abandoned. Industrial heritage parks, as integrated urban parks with new cultural and ecological paradigms, provide unique cultural ecosystem services (CES) that contribute to the sustainable development of urban renewal. Assessing their CES to identify public satisfaction is essential for urban green space planning and management and for enhancing human well-being. Thus, we tried to investigate public perceptions of CES in industrial heritage parks and explored the relationship between public satisfaction with CES and high-quality industrial heritage parks. Using importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) to assess CES based on public perceptions, the cultural ecosystem services importance satisfaction analysis (CES-ISA) framework was established. Two successful examples of industrial heritage renewal in China, Qijiang Park, and Shougang Park were selected as case studies. The results indicated that: ⅰ) There is a positive correlation between public importance-satisfaction feedback at the cultural level and high quality industrial heritage parks; ⅱ) the recreational, aesthetic and cultural heritage, and spiritual services provided by industrial heritage parks were the types of CES most valued by the public; ⅲ) improving the sense of place service is key to enhancing public satisfaction and promoting the sustainability of industrial heritage parks; ${\rm{iiii}}$) the CES-ISA framework can identify differences between public perceptions of importance and satisfaction with CES. It is beneficial to obtain management priorities for cultural services in industrial heritage parks.</p> </abstract>