User surveys of Ankara's urban parks

The history of Ankara's urban parks goes back to the early days of the Turk ish Republic. Some of the present large parks originate from parks establis hed as part of the reconstruction works following the declaration of Ankara as the capital city of the newly founded Republic (1920s). User surveys ar e important sources of data to aid the planning, design and management proc esses of urban parks. This paper focuses on three parks in Ankara for surve y and evaluation purposes. To analyse the use of the parks, a literature su rvey and a questionnaire survey were carried out together. The former descr ibes the distributional structure of the parks whereas the latter makes ass essments by exploring the characteristics of park users, user satisfaction, reported problems and requirements. The findings suggest that the use of e ach park has its own characteristics although there appear some similaritie s within some of the studied use areas. As a result, recommendations for fu ture planning are suggested. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights rese rved.