Social value of landscape architecture: Bursa Kültürpark social performance evaluation

Open green areas, which are one of the most important components of urban life quality, are rapidly decreasing or disappearing in the changing urban structure. The rapidly emerging problem of urbanization in the world, as well as ecological, social and economic losses, has caused open green areas to gain vital importance in cities. Minimizing the effects of this reduction or disappearance and restoring the open green spaces in the cities are very important for the future of both our living spaces and the city. The economic, ecological and social benefits of open-green areas in these conditions should be measured and shared with the public by scientific methods. The benefits demonstrated by these methods can be used for open-green areas in cities in the future with measurable assessments. The origin of the studies related to the evaluation of the designed space of the users is based on the post-use evaluation (POS) studies conducted in the 90' years. However, systematic studies on the measurement of the economic, ecological and social value of open green spaces within the framework of similar methodological approaches have been initiated by the American Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) since 2010. LAF compared the case studies of light green space projects before and after their sample field study using similar methodologies made value measurements. The results obtained are presented as landscape performance values of light green areas. As a country in the process of rapid urbanization, Turkey has faced numerous problems regarding the nature of urban open green areas. The reduction of light green spaces and the change in user expectations is also one of these problems. For the protection and development of open green areas, firstly, the social value of these areas is important for the cities of our country. For this reason, within the scope of the study, it was aimed to measure the current social performance value of Bursa Kulturpark, which is the fourth largest city in terms of population of Turkey. In this context, social performance evaluation methods of sample field studies in the literature were examined and appropriate data acquisition methods were selected. Using data obtained by survey, user and field observation methods, the satisfaction level of park users on the components that constitute social performance has been determined. The study is intended to propose a repeatable method and contribute to the social values of open green areas in other cities of Turkey and to guide designers in this context.