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. 2022 Dec:228:104554.
doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2022.104554. Epub 2022 Sep 6.

Use of smartphone mobility data to analyze city park visits during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jonathan Jay  1 , Felicia Heykoop  1 , Linda Hwang  2 , Alexa Courtepatte  1 , Jorrit de Jong  3 , Michelle Kondo  4
Affiliations

Use of smartphone mobility data to analyze city park visits during the COVID-19 pandemic

Jonathan Jay et al. Landsc Urban Plan. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic focused attention on city parks as important public resources. However, monitoring park use over time poses practical challenges. Thus, pandemic-related trends are unknown.

Methods: We analyzed monthly mobility data from a large panel of smartphone devices, to assess park visits from January 2018 to November 2020 in the 50 largest U.S. cities.

Results: In our sample of 11,890 city parks, visits declined by 36.0 % (95 % CI [27.3, 43.6], p < 0.001) from March through November 2020, compared to prior levels and trends. When we segmented the COVID-19 period into widespread closures (March-April) and reopenings (May-November), we estimated a small rebound in visits during reopenings. In park service areas where a greater proportion of residents were White and highincome, this rebound effect was larger.

Conclusions: Smartphone data can address an important gap for monitoring park visits. Park visits declined substantially in 2020 and disparities appeared to increase.

Keywords: Big data; Covid-19; Parks; Racial equity; Smartphones.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Monthly park visits, scaled by visits in January-February of the same year. For each park, monthly visits were adjusted by the monthly count of devices observed in the SafeGraph sample in the city where the park was located, then scaled against mean values from January and February of the same year.
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