Park visitation and walkshed demographics in the United States
K. Linnell, M. Fudolig, L. Bloomfield, T. McAndrew, T. H. Ricketts, J. P. M. O'Neil-Dunne, P. S. Dodds, and C. M. Danforth

Times cited: 2
Abstract:
A large and growing body of research demonstrates the value of local parks to mental and physical well-being. Recently, researchers have begun using passive digital data sources to investigate equity in usage; exactly who is benefiting from parks? Early studies suggest that park visitation differs according to demographic features, and that the demographic composition of a park's surrounding neighborhood may be related to the utilization a park receives. Employing a data set of park visitations generated by observations of roughly 50 million mobile devices in the US in 2019, we assess the ability of the demographic composition of a park's walkshed to predict its yearly visitation. Predictive models are constructed using Support Vector Regression, LASSO, Elastic Net, and Random Forests. Surprisingly, our results suggest that the demographic composition of a park's walkshed demonstrates little to no utility for predicting visitation.
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