Parks have the power to provide several physical and mental health benefits for the public. However, if you want to ensure that your community members are able to enjoy these benefits, you have to focus on designing outdoor public spaces that are as safe, hygienic and health friendly as possible.
Here are 5 ways cities can make parks in the community more health friendly:
1. Perform Routine Maintenance
Routine maintenance is essential if you want to keep your park looking presentable and giving visitors a ‘healthy’ impression. Maintaining the greenery in your park will help to prevent injuries caused by falling branches or overgrown shrubs. Keep in mind that tall grass can also prove as a risk; especially if it’s hiding sharp objects or dangerous wildlife.
2. Install Rubbish Bin Enclosures
Without enclosures installed over them, rubbish bins can be left vulnerable to the harsh weather conditions and elements. Strong storms can easily cause rubbish to fly out of your bins and travel all over the community. Aside from this, unprotected rubbish bins can also be easy targets for bin raiding. Thankfully, rubbish bin enclosures are the solution to keeping your bin’s rubbish safely contained. Moreover, enclosures will also work to mask the smell of smelly bin contents and make bins in the area more easily identifiable.
3. Provide Education
If you want to keep your park health-friendly, you also have to make sure that you’re educating your community members on environmental issues such as littering, pollution and interacting with wildlife. One way to do this is by putting up signs and placards which inform visitors of the consequences of participating in undesirable activities. Alternatively, you could also host events that focus on educating the public and performing community service.
4. Encourage Exercise
Many people still prefer exercising outdoors over indoors. After all, the outside world offers a motivational training environment full of fresh air and bright sunshine. Best of all, it’s completely free to use! Thus, by outfitting your park to be exercise-friendly, you can encourage as many people as possible to come to your park and get their daily dose of physical activity. Consequently, you will be able to improve the overall health of your community.
5. Increase Safety Levels
You don’t want anyone coming to your park and experiencing injuries or feelings of distress. Luckily, there are plenty of ways for you to improve pedestrian safety in parks, especially at night. For instance, you can install lighting fixtures to increase visibility, which will prevent visitors to your space from stumbling around in the dark and falling over unseen objects. This will also prevent suspicious individuals from being able to lurk around unnoticed. Aside from this, you can also improve pedestrian safety levels by installing bollards, which will prevent traffic from being able to come onto your park grounds.
Create Health-Friendly Parks with Help from Cox Urban Furniture
Looking for innovative commercial street furniture to help enhance your outdoor community spaces? At Cox Urban Furniture, we are the leading providers of good-looking, functional and long-lasting street furniture designs. Moreover, we are a 100% Australian owned and operated business. So, you can rest assured knowing that we fully understand the demands of the harsh Australian climate and weather conditions. With over 25 years of experience in professional industrial design, you can expect us to understand the requirements of your brief and provide you with an accurate solution.
To find out more about our range of park furniture, call Cox Urban Furniture now!
