Land use diversity and park use in New York City

Neighborhood parks and mixed-use land development are both understood to be important independent contributors to physical activity levels. It has been hypothesized that mixed-use land development could increase park use as a result of mixed-use neighborhoods being consistently activated throughout the day, but the results of previous research on this question have been inconsistent and the mediational role of neighborhood activation has not been tested. This study leverages data from Google Places Popular Times and the National Establishment Time Series to directly test the mediational role of the daily temporal distribution of neighborhood activation, to construct a novel measure of commercial activity diversity, and to help disentangle built-environment density from commercial diversity. Park use data was measured from 10,004 systematic observations of 20 neighborhood parks in New York City in the spring and summer of 2017. The hypothesis that commercial activity diversity is positively associated with park use was not supported in any models. However, a positive relationship between built-environment density and park use was found, which may help to explain prior inconsistent findings.