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Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621

Safety Research of Children's Recreational Space in

Shanghai Urban Parks

Nannan Dong1 Jian Chen.2 Shenghong Zhang.3

1
College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tongji University, No. 1239 Siping Road,
Yangpu District, Shanghai, 200092,China
2
Shanghai Landscape Design Institute, No.45 Xinle Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai,
200031,China
3
ERA Landscape Planning and Design Co.,Ltd., No.63 Chifeng Road, Yangpu District,
Shanghai, 200092,China
Abstract: 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.

1 Research Background
1.1 Functions of Recreational Spaces in the Growth of Our Children.
Activities in indoor and outdoor environments are essential parts of the growth of our
children. an outdoor setting can provide for a creative and free environment that encourages
self-understanding and exploration. Outdoor recreation can help to develop children’ sports skill,

1877-7058 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of the Urban Transitions Conference
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2017.07.115
 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621 613

and help them to learn the world and physical and mental health. They have also established a
relationship between the way children interact with their environment and their growth (in terms
of mental, physical, intellectual, and social) >@.
1.2 The Safety Requirements of Recreational Spaces for Our Children
As children most often play in an outdoor setting, outdoor recreational spaces are an
important part in the growth of our children. Aside from being able to provide for an exciting
place for outdoor experiences, the most important consideration a parent or guardian looks out for
when picking an outdoor recreational space is its safety standards. Furthermore, as the
demographics and family structures in the city envolves into a greatly nuclear family majority
society, the wellbeing of our children is becoming ever more important in China. People have
higher requirement to children’s growth environment with the change of population structure and
family pattern as well as the two-child policy fully open in China. Whether the space is safe has
become the most important factors to consider when parents choose a recreational space in urban
park for their children to play >@. In the interviews conducted with parents coming from cities
like Beijing, most parents feel that safety is not guaranteed for their children should they play
outside. This mind set directly lowers the time our children spend outdoors, forcing them to be
only active in protected indoor spaces, greatly impairing the progress of their physical and mental
growth >@. The safety issues arose to become the greatest barrier between our children and
outdoor interactions. Thus, this research will centre around this critical issue.
To a child, the sense of security from their environment is essential to a healthy mind.
Through the vast experiences coming from different environments, the child develops a sense of
self awareness and confidence. If this cannot be fulfilled, he is likely to be frightened, suspicious,
and unconfident in nature. Such a problem is critical to the development of the future generations
and hence, must be eradicated as soon as possible.
2 Methodology
Children aged 3-7 were chosen as study subjects refer to the definition of children from Kidology,
Medicine, and authoritative organizations like the United Nations >@>@>@. Children aged 3-7
usually have the capability to behave and think independently, the outdoor recreation is the main
learning way at their process of growth. Compare to school-age children, they have higher
frequency to participate in outdoor recreation, and become the main recreation group in urban
parks >@. Different terminology standards have different definition and classification of urban
parks, Encyclopedia of China define urban parks as a kind of urban public space which is
constructed by government or public bodies, it is open to public for sightseeing, leisure and
entertainment, etc.>@, Urban Green Space Classification Standard set the definition of park
green space as a kind of green space that can be used as sightseeing and recreation with the
function of ecology, beautify the environment and disaster prevention[9], Area of park green areas
includes comprehensive park, community park, theme park, belt-shaped park and green area
nearby street[10] [11]. This research chooses 13 comprehensive urban parks (see table 1 and fig.1)
614 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621

in Shanghai downtown as the samples based on the consideration of space variety, use frequency
and accessibility, a comprehensive urban park usually has wide range of radiation, and was
constructed all types of children’s recreational space such as playground, lawn, square, fitness area
and waterfront etc., which makes the research survey have certain representativeness and
universality. Those 13 comprehensive parks located in Shanghai downtown have good
accessibility to ensure the feasibility of survey and universality of collected data.
As safety hazard is mostly hidden, uncertain, and often unseen, this research uses
non-probability sampling techniques. In the process of analysing, we paid more attention to
quality of the data rather than the quantity of the data to ensure the comprehensiveness and
accuracy of our results. Specifically, the research method and data acquisition in this article are
mainly divided into the following three stages to complete between May and October in 2015.
(1) The first stage aims to identify common children’s accidental injury types in urban parks,
method is the non-probability sampling interview following the principle of “information
saturation”, means when the interview information began to repeat to no longer update at the
process of accumulating samples of accidental injury types, the information is close to
saturation, the survey of first stage is finished. The base number of interview is 100 persons,
with subsequent rounds of interview with additional 50 persons until the information began to
repeat. At the end there can be conclude to 8 types of accidental injury: tripping, slipping,
collision, drowning, crushing, internal injury, insect and small animal bites and sunburn.
(2) The second stage aims to learn more about the detail process of accidental injury by guiding
parents or children to recall as much information as possible in a recalled-style description
way, getting a large amount of oral textural information with the method of in-depth interview
following the principle of semi-structured asking, which enhanced the capacity and breadth of
interview’s information. Then further analyzing safety hazard factors with the Grounded
Theory Approach by the following detailed three stages if coding process>@: (1) Open
coding, extracting words about safety hazard from the oral textural information, then
generalizing concept category of those words, and coding those concept with A1, A2, A3……
(2) Relational coding, build the relationship among those concept, then gather to the field of
potential safety hazard and code the fields with B1, B2, B3…… (3) Axial coding,
generalizing a core category as C1 among fields, derived a model framework for the safety
hazards of children’s recreational park facilities. The safety hazards identified are studied
from an environmental and behavioral perspective.
(3) The third stage aims to analysis the relation between safety hazard and environment, behavior
with the method of questionnaire survey of children and parents. The survey has issued 350
questionnaires totally and there are 320 valid questionnaires were collected. Data obtained
through interviews and questionnaires were run through statistical software SPSS19.0 to
obtain information on the characteristics related to children’s behavior and the recreational
park environments.

Table 1: Characteristics of Regional Parks Studied

Inde Park District Area Playgroun 1.Gras 2.Plaz 3.Watersid 4.Fitnes

x ˄m2˅ d area s patch a e s
˄m2˅
 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621 615

1 Jing An Park Jing An 33600 108 ● ● ● ○

2 Nan Yuan Huang Pu 73350 237 ● ● ● ○
Park˄Nan (Relocate
Yuan Bing d from
Jiang Lu Pu)
Green ˅
3 Nan Pu Park Pu Dong 32825 600 ○ ● ○ ●
˄Youth New
Element Area
Extension
Base˅
4 Jing Nan Pu Dong 22400 500 ○ ● ○ ●
Park New
Area
5 Tang Qiao Pu Dong 39815 400 ○ ● ○ ●
Park New
Area
6 Xu Jia Hui Xu Jia 86452  ● ● ○ ○
Park Hui
7 Si Ping Yang Pu 50000 30 ○ ● ○ ●
Technologic
al Park
8 Min Xing Yang Pu 32032  ● ○ ● ○
Park
9 Huang Xing Yang Pu 39864 2780  ○ ●  ○  ○
Park 7
10 San Quan Zha Bei 24814 150 ○ ○ ○ ●
Park
11 Hua Shan Chang 26630 178 ○ ● ○ ○
Children’s Ning
Park
12 Xin Jing Chang 22331 155 ○ ○ ○ ●
Park Ning
13 Tian Shan Chang 72000 500 ●  ○ ●  ○
Park Ning
⌘˖●Presentˈ○Absent
Source: Author
616 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621

Figure 1: The distribution of 13 comprehensive parks in Shanghai. Source: Author

Note: Map Source ˉ Baidu Maps http://map.baidu.com/

3 Empirical Results
3.1 Types of Accidental Incidences

6% 4%
Home/ Hostel

Pedestrian/ Road
15%
47% Schools/
Kindergarten
Recreational Parks

28% Others

Figure 2: Comparison of types of accidental incidents Figure 3: Places where accidental incidents

in parks with in cities happen

compiled according to ljThe Analysis of Accidental

Harm to Children from 3 China CitiesNJ

“The Analysis of Accidental Harm to Children from 3 China Cities” >@shows that the types
 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621 617

of incidents happening in parks (such as slipping and falling, collision, overcrowding, drowning,
insect and small animal bites, headache, hyperventilation, infection, and sunburnt etc.) can be
classified into two major categories: Internal and External causes harm. External harm covers
majority of the accidental incidents happening and is most observable amongst the injuries caused.
However, internal injuries are caused by a variety of factors and takes longer to heal. Most of the
time, they cannot be immediately attended to and are difficult to prevent. The scope of this
research includes scent triggered dizziness and difficulty in breathing, asthma, and bacterial
infection caused by accidental ingestion and contact. Other 8 accidental incidents in order of rate
of incidence is falling, tripping and slipping, collision, crushing, drowning, animal and insect bites,
sunburnt, and internal injury and is by no means exhausting. Neither are the consequences as
severe as those causing death such as suffocation, explosion, and electrocution. Notably, traffic
incidences is a prominent safety hazard in our children’s outdoor recreational activities. According
to the study, it is one of the top 5 most commonly experienced accidental incidents happening in
recreational parks. This could be attributed to the current management regulation of public park
facilities. According to “Shanghai Parks Regulatory Framework”, the 17th ordinance >@, “Other
than non-motorized vehicles reserved for special groups (the elder, the sick, the disabled), other
vehicles are prohibited in park facilities”. Additionally, some parks have their own visitor house
rules in addition to national regulations to prevent accidental incidents happening to children
within the parks. Such house rules include, forbidding all non-motorized entry, lowering the speed
limit of non-motorized vehicles reserved for members with special needs. Other than rules relating
to vehicles, some parks also prohibit fireworks and firecracker and pets to be brought into the park,
decreasing the risk of harm to children and members of the public. These rules are enforced
effectively through security
patrols in parks.

3.2 Probability of Incidences 17% Did experience some

form of accidental
320 samples were obtained
incidents
in the second round of interview. Did not experience some
form of accidental
Of which, 83% of interviewees 83% incidents

admitted that their children has

encountered some form of Figure 4: Percentage of people experiencing
accidents in parks, Source: Author
accident in parks. This reflects
that the current safety condition
of researched parks is still unsatisfactory.
618 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621

Amongst those who admitted, almost 80% came from parents of children aged 3 to 4. From
this, we imply that the probability of them encountering an accident in parks increases as the
children age. This is because, at the age of 3 to 4, the movement of a child is restricted and
carefully monitored by parents. However, as the child ages, he has more freedom and yearns more
exciting experiences, therefore, the probability of safety threats increases.

100.00%
Percentage against entire
population of city

Number of people that did not encounter

56.50% any accidents

26.20%
8.70%
4.30% 4.30%
0.00%
3 4 5 6 7
Age

Fig 5: Probability of accidents according to age. Source˖Author

3.3 Characteristics Distribution of Accidental Incidences

According to the interview, in order of rate of incidence, the accidental incidents are
tripping and slipping, collision, drowning, crushing, internal injury, insect and animal bites and
sunburn. Combining this with other studies relating to accidental incidences experienced by
children, it is concluded that accidents happening in parks are of less severe, more concentrated,
and more specific in nature.

4% 1% 1% 4%
Fall
3%
12% Slip/ Trip Over

Collision

Crush

27% Drown

Insect/ Animal
48% Bites
Sunburnt

Figure 6: Ratio of collision into objects to collision into other users, Source: Author

Accidental harm can be classified into two categories: Severe incidents (results in
hospitalization, disability, or deaths) and light incidents (does not result in hospitalization).
Globally, incidents resulting in physical harms includes traffic accidents, drowning, and physical
 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621 619

attacks while incidents that result in deaths includes falling, traffic accidents, drowning, burnt, and
poisoning. In in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Guanzhou, falling stands at the most common
accident across all age groups and genders followed by collision and crushing, sprain, cuts, pierce,
and traffic incidents[15] [16] [17]. This coincides with the study with previous studies done.
Incidents resulting in severe consequences such as traffic incidents, drowning, burnt, and
poisoning were not mentioned in most parent’s interviews, while falling occupies 12%. Therefore,
by looking at the severity of consequences happening in parks, the safety hazards can be reduced
through addition and modification of measures.
Secondly, results show that there are seven major types of accidental incidences happening in
parks, of which slipping and falling, collision, and falling stand at 70% of all incidents. This will
be one of the main target area for rectification of safety hazards in our study.
Thirdly, through the interviews, the parents have clear definition to the terms such falling and
slipping, collision, and drowning, aiding in the exploration of causes of such incidents.
3.4 Analysis of potential safety hazard factors

Through a data analysis method based on Ground Theory, 320 numbered interviews were
processed, and 8 common accidental injuries and 12 safety hazards were identified. The safety
hazards are: location problem, scale problem, environmental sanitary, lack of clear warning signs,
dangerous behavior, negligence of guardians, and harm by other users.
The model derived the inter link and relationships between the causes, consequences, and
parties involved. The typical safety hazards can be described as the recreational open spaces are
lack of distinctive borders of play area and warning signs and alarm systems around water bodies,
the limited scope of children recreational open spaces cause the lack in variety and number of play
facilities, illogical zoning of play area, and other minor problems. Conflicting interests between
the children and the adults towards usage of the same space happen mostly in open areas such as
plazas. The scale, choice of material and design integrity of the play facilities are compromised,
the markings on the ground fail to create an effective buffer zone for the play areas. The
maintenance of playground facilities lack clear guidelines and standardized workflow procedures,
the efficiency is also low, more efforts needs to be put into the maintenance, cleaniness, and
vegetation management within the park. Some other hazards are created by people’s behaviour
such as children lack of ability to make logical and rational decisions, parents or guardians neglect
the potential danger or harmed by other users.
620 Nannan Dong et al. / Procedia Engineering 198 (2017) 612 – 621

Fig 7: Security Hazards of City Parks Chain Model Source: Author

4 Conclusion and Discussion

Based on the analysis of potential safety hazard factors, we learn that the safety in
recreational park facilities for children is a complex system that involves various stakeholders.
The subject of this system is children and the object is children’s recreation space in urban parks.
As the system subject, children make the safety control by the aspect of behavior, in the
corresponding way, the recreational space make the safety control by the following 3 aspects as
planning, design and maintaining, by control the process of planning, design and maintaining we
can build a full life-cycle service environment, meanwhile, the safety state of human can be seen
as dynamic impact factors which permeate this safety environment.
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