Perception of publicness of public spaces: public parks in Colombo and Sri Jayawardenapura

Abstract

Studies have shown that “publicness” of public spaces is gradually reducing all over the world. As a result, they are losing their significance in the opportunities provided for social interaction. This has been recognized by many researchers to be a critical issue causing many adverse effects. Research has also shown that the perception of “publicness” could vary depending on an individual and his or her living environment. This paper presents a model developed to identify the relative importance of the attributes which contribute to the perception of the publicness of public spaces. Self-explicated conjoint analysis method was used to analyze the responses of a questionnaire survey and to develop a model to measure the publicness of public parks. Evaluation of four public parks in Colombo and in Sri Jayewardenepura is presented. Attributes such as cleanliness, calmness and security were considered to be the most important attributes contributing to the publicness of public spaces.