Change of urban park usage as a response to the COVID-19 global pandemic

Abstract

Urban parks became critical for maintaining the well-being of urban residents during the COVID-19 global pandemic. To examine the impact of COVID-19 on urban park usage, we selected New York City (NYC) and used SafeGraph mobility data, which was collected from a large sample of mobile phone users, to assess the change in park visits and travel distance to a park based on 1) park type, 2) the income level of the visitor census block group (visitor CBG) and 3) that of the park census block group (park CBG). All analyses were adjusted for the impact of temperature on park visitation, and we focused primarily on visits made by NYC residents. Overall, for the eight most popular park types in NYC, visits dropped by 49.2% from 2019 to 2020. The peak reduction in visits occurred in April 2020. Visits to all park types, excluding Nature Areas, decreased from March to December 2020 as compared to 2019. Parks located in higher-income CBGs tended to have lower reductions in visits, with this pattern being primarily driven by large parks, including Flagship Parks, Community Parks and Nature Areas. All types of parks saw significant decreases in distance traveled to visit them, with the exception of the Jointly Operated Playground, Playground, and Nature Area park types. Visitors originating from lower-income CBGs traveled shorter distances to parks and had less reduction in travel distances compared to those from higher-income CBGs. Furthermore, both before and during the pandemic, people tended to travel a greater distance to parks located in high-income CBGs compared to those in low-income CBGs. Finally, multiple types of parks proved crucial destinations for NYC residents during the pandemic. This included Nature Areas to which the visits remained stable, along with Recreation Field/Courts which had relatively small decreases in visits, especially for lower-income communities. Results from this study can support future park planning by shedding light on the different uses of certain park types before and during a global crisis, when access to these facilities can help alleviate the human well-being consequences of “lockdown” policies.

Urban birds’ tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by increased variation in human levels due to COVID-19 shutdowns

“…4; e.g. [7,[39][40][41]), perhaps explaining why the occurrence of wildlife in the cities did not always increase during the COVID-19 shutdowns [17,19]. To test whether the response of birds to changing human levels is non-linear or based on threshold human levels, repeated escape distance trials of marked individuals during various times of day and different days of the week, as well as under various natural or experimentally induced levels of human presence and activity are needed.…”

“…Because the COVID-19 interventions increased the variation in human presence outdoors [39][40][41] and the temporal scale at which birds evaluate the changes in the landscape of fear and adjust their response is unknown, we tested how changes in human presence across multiple temporal scales (hour-to-hour, day-to-day, week-to-week and year-to-year) were associated with avian escape distance. We used (1) actual human numbers recorded during escape distance observation as a measure of hourly changes in human presence, (hereafter "Number of humans"), Google Mobility Reports data (hereafter "Google Mobility", https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility) as a measure of daily changes in human presence in parks, the stringency of governmental restrictions (hereafter "Stringency index"; https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index; based on data originally published in [42])…”

Urban birds' tolerance towards humans was largely unaffected by COVID-19 shutdown-induced variation in human presence

“…Behavioral flexibility plays a role in short-term adjustments 31 , 47 , 48 , although our large-scale and multi-taxonomic comparison indicates that the room for behavioral adjustments may be limited for urban birds (e.g. because environmental filtering has left urban areas with mainly bolder individuals; see below) 40 , 45 .…”

The COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Hepatitis C Virus Circulation and Genotypic Frequencies—Implications for Hepatitis C Prevention, Treatment and Research

“…This study claims that influenza subtypes changed from A-dominant to B/Victoria-dominant. Mobility dropped below baseline levels after the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions [ 2 , 9 , 10 ], which impacted infections relying on human contact. This is probably true not only considering respiratory infections, but also infections for which transmission occurs via exposition to contaminated blood and other body fluids, such as HCV.…”

“…During the period where the COVID-19 pandemic was defined as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the WHO, the tests for and detection of influenza and other infectious diseases significantly decreased as the focus was COVID-19 itself [ 4 , 9 ]. In fact, the emergence of COVID-19 resulted in a decrease in patients receiving HCV testing and treatment worldwide [ 11 , 12 , 13 ].…”