Safety Research of Children's Recreational Space in Shanghai Urban Parks

The recreational spaces in urban parks are important to our children for the development of their intellectual, physical and psychological wellbeing. Not only will the failure to meet basic demands for safe and secure recreational spaces causes mental and physical harm to the children, it also leads to the loss in opportunity for children to play in open spaces. Therefore, the research in the safety of recreational spaces for children aims to analyse the potential dangers during recreational activities and to promote safety standards so as to create a safe and healthy outdoor environment for our children.Taking children aged from 3 to 7 as study subjects across 13 regional comprehensive parks in Shanghai downtown area, this article presents an empirical research on accidental injuries in urban parks. Several theories from related subjects such as landscape sociology and child psychology were used. Through interviews and questionnaires, 8 types of accidental injuries were identified using a nonprobability sampling technique. Event probability and distribution characteristics as well as its relationship between children's behaviour and recreation space characteristic were analysed by means of descriptive qualitative statistics. As a result of qualitative research, the framework for potential safety hazard chain model is established and 12 potential safety hazard factors that caused accidental injuries and its spatial features are extracted from the aspects of physical environment and human behaviour after coding 320 interview data based on Grounded Theory Approach.