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Ka Yan Lai

The Early Career Researcher Award finalist
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Are Greenspace Attributes Associated with Perceived Restorativeness? A Comparative Study of Urban Cemeteries and Parks in Edinburgh, Scotland

Ka Yan Lai MSc

(Co-authors: Chinmoy Sarkar, Ziwen Sun, Iain Scott)

The University of Hong Kong, Department of Urban Planning and Design


Full entry title

Lai, Ka Yan, Sarkar, Chinmoy, Sun, Ziwen, and Scott, Iain. "Are Greenspace Attributes Associated with Perceived Restorativeness? A Comparative Study of Urban Cemeteries and Parks in Edinburgh, Scotland." Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 53 (2020): 126720. Read here.

Research description

Urban cemeteries, previously located on the outskirts of cities, currently find themselves landlocked in strategically important locations as a result of decades of city expansion and sprawl. In an age of diminishing urban greenspaces, our study aimed to leverage on the salutogenic potential of these under-utilized passive greenspaces for population health. We examined the differences in the associations between greenspace attributes and perceived restorativeness (defined as recovering from mental fatigue) across the cemeteries and parks. We additionally explored if prior social (i.e., acquainted to a deceased person interred in the cemetery or not) and geographical distance to cemeteries had significant beneficial impact on participants’ perceived restorativeness.