The Contribution Of Parks’ Facilities To Social Interactions In The Clusters At Kota Baru Parahyangan

Abstract

As a part of the city and urban elements, park greatly supports human beings in many aspects, especially as a medium for social interactions. With the existence of parks in every tatar in Kota Baru Parahyangan (KBP), the residents‘ needs of social interactions can be accommodated. Clare Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis (1998) categorized people‘s socializing in two ways; Overt Socializing and Covert Socializing. These two types of socializing define two basic requirements of facilities that a park should have : facilities that support social contacts and some comfortable natural settings to support the recreational purposes. This paper classifies the analysis based on the groups of users, which are children (1-12 years), teenagers, adults (including adults who come with babies or toddler), elders, and people with special needs (disabled and toddlers). Each group has their own expectations regarding the park‘s facilities, which once fulfilled, will attract them to come and stimulate (or trigger) social interactions. Therefore, a discussion about how the facilities in the KBP‘s park meet the requirements is performed through a quantified evaluation to find out how many groups of users are actually facilitated and accommodated to have social interactions in the parks.

Keywords: park, social, interaction, playground, natural-setting, facilities.