Urban Public Space and Well-being: Use of Urban Parks by Children and Parents

Abstract

The essence of well-being lies in respecting the diversity among individuals. The perspective of individual diversity is also important when considering well-being achieved by children and their parents by using urban public spaces. This paper applies Sen’s capability approach as a framework to examine the achievement of well-being among individuals to examine the use of urban public spaces by children and parents. This yielded two main results. First, achieving well-being among diverse individuals is more challenging than the minimum life assurance considered essential for everyone. Second, it is difficult to reconcile the achievement of well-being among diverse stakeholders with the characteristics of urban public spaces. Therefore, the development of operational policy techniques to enhance the possibility of achieving well-being is thus crucial; these techniques include implementing hazard elimination and risk management, developing diverse parks, implementing play assistance, lending tools, and attending children’s activities.