City and Environment Interactions 19 (2023) 100109

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City and Environment Interactions

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Pocket park in urban regeneration of China: Policy and perspective

Bin Yang a, Bo Hong b, *
a
School of Energy and Safety Engineering, Tianjin Chengjian University, Tianjin, China
b
College of Landscape Architecture & Arts, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Perched on the edge and corner of the city center, pocket parks transform urban vacant land into vibrant urban
Pocket parks oases. It can greatly shorten the distance from citizens to the park, thereby promoting citizens’ participation in
Urban regeneration outdoor activities and improving urban vitality. The construction of pocket parks in China started late. However,
Urban greenery
it has developed rapidly in recent years, which supports urban regeneration. A government document, published
Urban vitality
by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China in 2002, promotes
the construction of pocket parks. In the process of promoting the construction of pocket parks in Chinese cities,
problems such as unclear construction standards, difficult operation and maintenance, blind copying, and
emphasis on the landscape over the function have emerged. The aforementioned issues are elaborated and
corresponding suggestions are pointed out in this short communication.

Background
With rapid population growth and urbanization, at least half of the
world’s population now lives in cities [1]. In developing countries such
as China, urbanization developed rapidly from 2008 to 2018, with a
large number of people migrating from rural areas to cities. Rapid ur­
banization not only raises local air temperatures, leading to the urban
heat island effects [2], but also affects air quality, which has a great
impact on people’s health and daily life [3]. In addition, with the rapid
urbanization process, green space is gradually occupied by facilities
such as housing and workplaces. As a result, it is becoming increasingly
difficult for citizens to access green spaces.
Parks are a significant component of urban green spaces because they
improve the ecological environment within cities and provide essential
regulatory ecosystem services such as climate adaptation [4,5], storm
control [6,7], urban heat island effect mitigation [8,9], air quality
improvement [10], and wind environment improvement [11]. The park
also provides supply-based ecosystem services that benefit social re­
lations [12], human health [13–15], and reduce the risk of diabetes
[16], sick building syndrome [17–19], obesity [20], and other diseases.
The World Health Organization (WHO) also encourages local govern­
ments to increase the provision of urban green spaces. However,
improving the provision of urban green spaces as urban parks in cities
would be a difficult and challenging task due to the scarcity of space
[21,22]. It would be practical to include more small urban green spaces
such as pocket parks in this context which would be integrated into the
citizens’ daily life [23,24].
Pocket Park (or vest-pocket park), first proposed by landscape ar­
chitect Robert Zion in 1963: “Located between buildings, only 50 × 100
(feet) in size, nearby workers and shoppers can sit and get a moment’s
rest ”[12]. It refers to the park’s green activity venues that are open to
the public, small in scale, diverse in shape, and have certain recreational
functions. In China, the area is generally between 400 and 10,000 square
meters, including small amusement parks, small micro-green spaces,
and so forth [25,26].
Pocket parks are distinguished from parks in the traditional sense by
small area, discrete distribution, flexible site selection, high utilization
rate, and convenient accessibility. The presence of pocket parks in cities
is like an oasis in the desert for cities with high buildings, which not only
provide ecosystem services as other forms of urban green infrastructure
but also work as a low-cost green infrastructure that is suitable for high-
density cities [27,28]. Therefore, in the context of China’s rapid ur­
banization, pocket parks have become an effective way to solve the
problems of urban environment deterioration and green space
reduction.
Common problems
The construction of pocket parks is one of the key components of
urban regeneration. However, the current top-down specific tasks for

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hongbo@nwafu.edu.cn, hongbo@nwsuaf.edu.cn (B. Hong).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cacint.2023.100109
Received 27 March 2023; Received in revised form 14 May 2023; Accepted 17 May 2023
Available online 22 May 2023
2590-2520/© 2023 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/).
B. Yang and B. Hong
urban regeneration do not specify the construction of pocket parks.
There are still some common problems in the process of pocket park
construction.
Unclear construction standards
In the process of planning, site selection, design, and construction of
pocket parks, there is a lack of systematic, professional, and imple­
mentable standard system, a lack of consideration and reasonable layout
of the number, location, and overall style of pocket parks for each main
and secondary road, and a lack of integration and interoperability with
relevant policies that have been introduced, such as park city, sponge
city, forest city, and smart city. “Greenery can be seen within 300 m, the
garden can be found within 500 m” is the goal to be achieved. However,
the styles of newly constructed pocket parks and already existed pocket
parks are not well coordinated, which can not reflect regional
characteristics.
Difficult management and maintenance
Most of the pocket parks are built and transformed on corner and
vacant land. Due to the lack of regular land use procedures, it is
impossible to enjoy policy funds. Meanwhile, because of its small scale
and sudden increase, the number of financial and material resources at
all levels of manpower is difficult to undertake the enormous daily
maintenance tasks. Most pocket parks are located in the back streets and
corners of the old town. These urban green spots are often ignored by
people other than nearby residents. As a result, many pocket parks are
prone to rebuilding and lack maintenance, and cannot be retained for a
long time.
Blind replication in construction process
Some local governments have not formed a clear plan for pocket park
construction. After the document on promoting the construction of
pocket parks issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural
Development of the People’s Republic of China, some regional govern­
ments only pay attention to finishing the annual construction tasks and
ignore consider their conditions, so that the style in the construction of
pocket parks always tend to be similar. The current pocket park con­
struction requirements are generally between 400 and 10,000 square
meters. This is quite easy in plain cities, however, it is difficult to
implement this standard for western mountain cities, such as Chongqing
which is hard to find 400 square meters of flat land to build pocket parks
due to the influence of mountain city topography.
Emphasis on landscape over function
Although some cities have built many pocket parks, they are often
just green spaces without supporting functions. Even if some pocket
parks have some supporting functions such as simple tables, chairs,
swings, and, other facilities. In general, their functions are relatively
single. The majority of governments build pocket parks without
considering the actual needs of the residents in the radiation radius area.
Some pocket parks don’t even have lighting facilities, let alone recrea­
tional facilities and cultural facilities. Due to the lack of scientific design,
there are fewer seats for the elderly and play facilities for children,
resulting in a low utilization rate.
Solutions
Incorporate pocket park construction into urban regeneration
Specific requirements for the construction and renovation of pocket
parks should be clarified by the local government, including the number
and scale of urban regeneration tasks. As one of the relevant standards in
2
City and Environment Interactions 19 (2023) 100109
urban regeneration, the construction contents of pocket parks in rele­
vant policy standards should be illustrated. Local governments should be
encouraged to construct pocket parks through appropriate awards and
subsidies. The effectiveness of pocket park construction should be
incorporated into the assessment system. For instance, the quantity,
quality of pocket park construction, and recognition by residents could
be included in the assessment system for evaluating the performance of
urban regeneration, especially for the efficiency of infrastructure reno­
vation in the old town. It is helpful to ensure the residents enjoy public
facilities and resource equality to include the construction of pockets as
compulsory items in the assessment system.
Establish and refine standard system of pocket parks
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the Peo­
ple’s Republic of China should study and introduce a standard system
related to the construction of pocket parks, which highlights three re­
quirements. First, the plan emphasizes livability. In the planning and site
selection, priority should be given to areas without coverage by large
parks. In design and construction, attention should be paid to protecting
original topography and landforms, large and old trees, and priority
should be given to selecting native suitable plants. Fully consider the
needs of surrounding residents, increase the functionality of the activity
venue, and implement the requirements of suitable aging and childhood.
Second, construction highlights practicality. Various small green spaces,
small parks, street gardens, and small community sports courts can be
renovated into pocket parks. It not only has ecological functions but also
performs important cultural and social functions. Strengthen supporting
construction, increase residents’ multi-dimensional experience, and
make it an important carrier of green, ecological, rest, and fitness. Third,
management highlights long-term effectiveness. Further, clarify man­
agement requirements, establish and improve management and pro­
tection systems, and strengthen daily inspection management of park
sanitation and environmental protection. Explore the implementation of
management models such as the pocket park director system and
volunteer service, which assign responsibility to concrete people.
Encourage different management and maintenance models
Integrate resources and manage pocket parks flexibly. First,
encouraged policies should be formulated for the construction, reno­
vation, and maintenance of pocket parks. For example, pocket parks
with high land utilization, strong recognition by surrounding residents,
and outstanding regional identification will be appropriately given
certain policy incentives to alleviate the dilemma of insufficient finan­
cial resources of local government. Second, explore the operation and
maintenance mode of “gardening and raising gardens” according to
local conditions. Set up high-quality green plants, cultural and creative
specimen retail, public shared book houses, cultural salons, and other
pollution-free, zero-damage, high-quality cultural formats in pocket
parks. Use operating income to supplement parts of maintenance
expenditure. Third, explore the establishment of a mechanism for “co-
raising green space” in society. Take the community as the main body,
and call on enterprises, owners, and residents around the pocket park to
share and co-raise green spaces around them [29]. Enterprises adopt
gardens, owners adopt facilities, residents adopt seedlings, and sur­
rounding beneficiary groups take responsibility for maintaining pocket
parks.
Promote construction of pocket parks according to local conditions
First, improve service radius coverage of urban parks, facilitate res­
idents to enter the park nearby, carefully study the local situation, and
balance the layout. Combined with urban regeneration actions, com­
plete community construction, renovation of old urban communities,
and improve back streets and alleys, promote the construction of pocket
B. Yang and B. Hong
parks. Explore and make full use of illegal buildings, temporary build­
ings, urban corner land, abandoned land, idle land, and road nodes, to
plan and construct or renovate several pocket parks according to local
conditions [28]. Second, priority is given to the construction of pocket
parks in areas with insufficient service radius coverage of park green
space, to facilitate the residents to visit the park nearby. Third, closely
follow the skeleton of urban mountains and rivers and traffic road net­
works in the region, adopt measures to local conditions, and take the
road of scientific, ecological, green, and low-carbon development.
Fourth, the design style of pocket parks in different regions should fully
express the regional cultural characteristics. Different pocket parks can
formulate the theme of characteristic venues, which can be distributed
together with the construction history of surrounding communities and
the characteristics of residents, to effectively solve the homogenization
problems [30].
Improve functionality of pocket parks
First, it is necessary to definite basic functions. Based on greening
and beautification, pocket parks should be reasonably equipped with
basic functions such as leisure seats, children’s play facilities, and square
open spaces. Second, citizens’ “harbor” functions should be supported.
Encourage the construction of pocket parks into citizens’ “harbors”, and
rationally allocate functions such as drinking water, charging power
sources, WiFi service, open-air movies, mother-and-baby rooms, and
non-motor vehicle parking spaces to satisfy the needs of residents [31].
Third, actively expand special functions. Some postal kiosks, 24-hour
book bars, cultural fitness, express delivery, and other facilities can be
added if possible. Gradually make the pocket park the “convenience
center” for residents. Forth, planning and designing pocket parks should
follow the basic principle of “people-oriented”, and need to fully
consider the will of the citizens. During the design phase, sufficient
research can be conducted on the needs of residents and public opinion-
gathering meetings can be held. Public participation in the construction
and maintenance stages can effectively solve the current lack of func­
tionality in pocket parks to guarantee their sustainability over time [23].
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Bin Yang: Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft. Bo
Hong: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
The data that has been used is confidential.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Tang Scholar of Northwest A&F
University.
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