A stroll in the park, a view of water: Quantifying older people's interaction with ‘green’ and ‘blue’ spaces in urban areas

Abstract

This article explores the extent to which 'green' and ‘blue’ (water-based) spaces in the environment are of interest to older people in their everyday lives and connects with research showing growing understanding of the importance of such spaces in urban areas and increasing numbers of active and mobile older people in societies around the world. We are concerned with both large-scale or formal 'green' and ‘blue’ features (open countryside, parks and lakes) and micro-scale patches of grass or cascading fountains. This article focuses on two groups of older people (60 years and over) living in Brighton and Hove on the South Coast of England, and Hackney in central London. A mixed methods approach involving the co-creation of data by means of geo-tagged digital photographs and GPS enabled tracklogs collected by 50 participants over a week of mobility away from their domicile. There was considerable variety in the extent of the 'green' and ‘blue’ space content of the photographs and in the distances travelled by participants, nevertheless some clearly focused on producing images of the natural environment in a range of settings spanning formal parkland, managed sporting grassland and relatively untamed countryside.