Evaluation of illuminated city parks by users: Meydan park and Atapark examples

With this study, it is aimed to investigate the effects of illumination in urban park areas on the user, inquire about liking and preferences of the users about illumination and examine the aesthetic effect of the current design on users. In this respect, two urban parks were chosen as the study area which have similar characteristics in terms of their usage principles, their location, accessibility and qualities in the city, but with two different approaches: traditional and modern, in terms of lighting types and techniques used. For this purpose, a questionnaire which prepared about lighting design was applied to their own users of both parks. After asking questions to identify users and determine their usage, "Semantic differentiation scale" was used for the semantic assessment of illuminated place components and elements of the two parks (pedestrian paths and ladders, seating areas, etc.) by the users. As a result of the statistical analysis of the data, it was seen that 75% of Meydan Park and 76% of Atapark are safe, place components and elements respectively for both parks, seating areas are reassuring with values of 3.46, 3.21; resting with 3.38, 3.34; moving with 3.25, 3.04; water elements reassuring with 3.68, 3.60; herbal elements were reassuring with 3.13, 3.02, effective with 3.04, 3.12, refreshing with 3.19, 3.09. These results show that although Meydan Park and Atapark differ in terms of lighting types and techniques, this does not cause great differences in terms of contribution from the security, aesthetics and economics, and similarly there is no big difference in users' liking and preferences related to lightin