Who Benefits? A Mixed Methods Study Assessing Community Use of a Major Metropolitan Park During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By providing spaces for recreation, physical activity, social gatherings, and time in nature, urban parks offer physical, mental, and social benefits to users. However, many urban residents face barriers to park use. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new potential barriers to urban park access and use, including changes to daily life and employment, closure of park amenities and restrictions to public movement, and risk from the coronavirus itself. The mixed-methods PARCS study measured use and perceptions of a large urban park in St. Louis, Missouri before, during, and after local COVID-19 contingency measures and restrictions. We examine data from 1,157 direct observation assessments of park usership, an online survey of park users (n=561), interviews with key stakeholders (n=27), four focus groups (n=30), and a community-based participatory research sub-study (n=66) to comprehensively characterize the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on park use. Park users who felt unsafe from the coronavirus experienced 2.65 higher odds of reducing park use. However, estimated park visits during COVID-19 contingency measures (n=5,023,759) were twice as high as post-contingency (n=2,277,496). Participants reported using the park for physical activity, recreation, time in nature, and socializing during the contingency period. Black, Hispanic/Latino, and young people were less likely to visit the park than others, suggesting an additional, disproportionate impact of the pandemic on minoritized and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. This study highlights the role of public spaces like parks as resources for health and sites where urban health inequities can be alleviated in times of public crisis.