The Use and Perception of Urban Green Space in the Wake of COVID-19

Dear Colleagues,

Following the success of the Special Issue of Land on the "Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Use and Perception of Urban Green Space", we are happy to announce the opening of a second volume of this thematic Special Issue.

The dramatic events of the pandemic have posed challenging questions worldwide, regarding not only public health but also the limitations on access to social spaces—particularly the isolation measures that were initiated in 2020 by most countries to contain the spread of the virus. The large number of scientific studies that have examined the effects of these measures demonstrates how such lockdowns particularly impact the use of urban green spaces and influence the public’s awareness of the critical role that such green spaces play in daily life.

Several common threads can be found in the first volume of our Special Issue. Although the use of green spaces is linked to the actual habits of individual people and their access to Nature, several studies highlighted the general need to guarantee equitable access to parks and other green areas, especially in a time of travel limitations (Nay et al., 2022; Burnett et al., 2022; Taff et al., 2021). Urban green spaces represent safe places for social interactions that were abruptly interrupted by the pandemic (Luo et al., 2022; Huerta and Utomu, 2022; Khalilnezhad et al., 2021), and people are keenly aware of the mental health benefits and relaxation that such places can offer (Uchiyama and Kohsaka, 2022; Li et al., 2022; Chen et al. 2022; MacKinnon et al., 2022). It has also been seen in multiple cases how the physical quality of a particular green space may influence the level of satisfaction and engagement by users (Feng and Burt, 2022).

The aim of this ongoing Special Issue is to collect further studies on how the need, perception and usage of green spaces have changed in the wake of the pandemic, and to shed light on how administrators and policy makers can confront the environmental, biological, and social threats that have arisen. It is our hope that by encouraging a communal discussion on the planning and management of urban green spaces, we can increase the resilience of both our cities and the natural environment on which they depend.

Dr. Francesca Ugolini
Prof. Dr. David Pearlmutter
Guest Editors

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• biophilia
• cities
• forest therapy
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