Importance–performance analysis and improvement of an urban park’s cultural ecosystem services based on users’ perspectives: A Beijing case study

ABSTRACT To construct urban parks in high-density urban areas is an important strategy for dealing with urban problems caused by rapid urbanization and global climate change, and even small-scale parks can provide cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, the differences in the users’ perspectives of the supply and demand of CES in small-scale urban parks have been underexplored. Therefore, this study takes a newly-built park in a complex urban block in Beijing as a case. It studies different users’ perspectives of the urban park’s CES using importance–performance analysis. The results show that: (1) Users’ perspectives of the importance and performance of the park’s CES significantly differed, and “Recreation” was the sub-item that had the largest gap between supply and demand. (2) Users’ spatial and temporal profiles were the main factors that affected their CES perspective. (3) Users most agreed with improving the two CES sub-items of “Rest” and “Recreation” through design optimization. This study suggests that policymakers and planners can formulate targeted promotion strategies based on an understanding of the mismatch between the supply and demand of CES in urban parks. It can also provide guidelines for the construction and optimization of parks in central areas of high-density cities. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


Introduction
Cities constitute the main habitats of human beings at present and in the future. As one of the main carriers of the natural environment in the urban context, public urban parks may become an important resource for improving public health (Jennings, Larson, and Yun 2016). People need to have access to nature through green spaces, such as urban parks in high-density built environments, to restore their bodies and minds (Konijnendijk et al. 2013). Especially as the global COVID-19 pandemic continues, urban parks form the most accessible outdoor venues for city dwellers. By providing access to the natural environment, the parks allow people to conduct outdoor activities and pursue psychological recovery, health promotion, leisure, relaxation, and social interaction (Geng et al. 2021). In most high-density cities, especially in city centers, land is extremely limited, and large-scale park implementation is difficult and expensive (Zhang and Han 2021). Accordingly, small-scale parks that can be flexibly arranged and that use urban scattered land or lowefficiency land, such as that which is designated for renovation and construction, have become important alternative measures that may be implemented ). These small-scale parks allow for the rigid constraint of having "more people, less land" in highdensity cities, and have become potential resources for natural-based solutions in urban centers (Abd El Aziz 2015).
Urban parks are an important source of cultural ecosystem services (CES) in the urban environment as they have a direct impact on human health and well-being (Breuste 2020). Although some studies have focused on the CES provided by urban parks, they have mainly focused on large-scale green spaces, especially those located in city suburbs or coastal areas (Haase et al. 2014;Blicharska et al. 2017), and relatively few studies have focused on small-scale urban parks (Kabisch, Qureshi, and Haase 2015). Small-scale urban parks are often built on existing free or scattered land subject to land restrictions. Some of these parks are where people will pass by when traveling from one place to another (Forsyth and Musacchio 2005), therefore are both strongly accessible and closely related to people's daily lives. Many people can benefit from these parks, while the parks themselves can give full play to CES. In order for this type of urban park to improve the physical and mental well-being of urban residents in a limited setting, it is necessary to maximize the role of CES through planning and design. Meanwhile, research has shown that there are differences in the perception of CES between planners and users (Riechers, Maria Noack, and Tscharntke 2017). In the context of understanding the interaction between humans and the environment, users' perspectives are more important than experts' opinions (Kuller 1991). Therefore, for park policymakers and planners, it is necessary to accurately understand the needs of different user groups in order to propose targeted planning and design strategies to better meet users' cognition and demand preferences for CES, especially for small-scale parks.
This study selects a park that was built in 2019 in Wudaokou, Haidian District (the central district in Beijing), as a case study to explore the relationship between CES supply and users' demand in a small urban park in a high-density urban area, so as to provide suggestions for the construction of parks in other similar areas. To understand the users' perspectives, we use the importance-performance analysis (IPA) method to analyze the difference between the importance and performance of CES and the correlation between the park users' sociodemographic and spatial-temporal characteristics and perspectives in the different parts of the same park. We also analyze the users' perspectives of the improvement strategies of CES. The results show that the urban park provides crucial CES in a mixed-use area in the city center and contributes to social equity to a certain extent. Simultaneously, the results imply that policymakers and planners should pay attention to some specific types of CES and should adopt a targeted transformation strategy. Moreover, communicative planning should be adopted during policy formulation and planning to effectively improve users' satisfaction and achieve a balance between CES supply and demand.

Literature review
In recent years, CES, as a special type of ecosystem service (ES) used to emphasize the connection between natural ecosystems and human well-being as a policy tool, has attracted increasing attention from scholars and policymakers (Table 1). Evaluating the effects of CES can support planning and design practices and policymaking. However, the existing research on CES is insufficient when compared to that on ES, and scant research exists on the CES of the urban ecosystem (Haase et al. 2014;Blicharska et al. 2017), especially in the rapidly developing cities (Dou et al. 2017). In addition, there are gaps regarding the application of CES to policy formulation and planning (Erik and Barton 2013;Steiner 2014). As an important component of the urban ecosystem, small-scale urban parks can improve human wellbeing and are, therefore, very relevant for  (Cheng et al. 2019); however, human perception provides a feasible angle for studying urban parks' CES (Hajung and Son 2018). IPA is a measurement that has been gradually introduced into the management of both the natural and built environments in recent years (Ivan 2015). Its basic principle is to compare the difference between users' expectations of a product with their actual experiences, so as to understand consumer satisfaction (Oliver 2010). The IPA method relies on collected survey data and the calculations and comparisons of the performance and importance scores of different variables to discover the advantages and disadvantages of the product or service, and help policymakers find areas that need further attention and improvement (Martilla and James 1977). In the CES research, IPA has been used to evaluate both users' intuitive experiences of CES and the relationship between the supply and demand of CES (Larson et al. 2013). Research on users' perspectives of CES can help policymakers and planners to properly understand the relationship between people and the environment rather than separately study human activity or environmental elements. In turn, a better understanding and experience of CES can encourage people to support and participate in various public affairs related to urban parks (Dickinson and Hobbs 2017). CES are produced by the interactions between people and the environment. Different users will have different experiences of a place, and users' different sociodemographic characteristics will also affect their feelings (Dickinson and Hobbs 2017). Therefore, there are differences in the type, quantity, and quality of CES provided by different urban parks, and there are also differences in the strengths or weaknesses and positive or negative differences in the perspectives of the CES in parks by different groups of people (Dade et al. 2020). As such, it is a challenge to integrate preferences that are site-specific and have individual-specific characteristics into policymaking (Riechers, Barkmann, and Tscharntke 2016). Previous studies have analyzed the CES of urban parks in developed countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden, and have showed that the interaction between people and urban parks is affected by the physical characteristics of the park (e.g., the local environmental conditions, residents' distance from the park, the size of the park, and the park's landscape features), which impact the performance of the park's CES through its influence on the users' activities (Xiaokun, Qiang, and Chand 2020;Peschardt and  Karlsson Stigsdotter 2013; Dade et al. 2020). Good design of these features can improve CES from the supply perspective. However, little research exists on urban parks in developing countries (Kabisch, Qureshi, and Haase 2015). Meanwhile, there is a knowledge gap in the in-depth study of people's perspectives of CES in different types of urban parks and even in different parts of the same park (Talal and Santelmann 2021).
Further, urban park users are diverse and have differentiated needs (Riechers, Barkmann, and Tscharntke 2018). The heterogeneity of the population composition and cultural structure in cities means that urban parks should provide heterogeneous CES. Because urban parks are products of the interaction between people and environmental resources, people's personal feelings and judgments will seriously affect their perspectives of the parks' CES. People's personal feelings are, to a large extent, influenced by individual characteristics (e.g., demographic factors, ethnicity, and social status), which form different preferences and value orientations for CES (Mak and Jim 2019;Vieira et al. 2018;Zanten et al. 2016;Gai et al. 2022). However, few of the existing studies have explored urban parks using multiple functions to identify the subtle differences in the perspectives of different user types. In addition, it is rare to conduct research on the supply and demand of urban parks' CES while discussing the relationship between the two from the users' perspectives.

Study location
This study selected an urban park located in Wudaokou, Haidian District (the central area of Beijing) as its case study ( Figure 1). The park is built as the start-up area of Jingzhang Railway Relic Park (hereinafter referred to as Jingzhang Park), which is a 1 km long narrow beltshaped area that has been built on the old railway site that connects two urban arterial roads. The narrowest part of the park is 7-8 m wide, and the widest part is less than 20 m. Wudaokou, where the park is located, is an area with mixed urban functions. It is close to Beijing's first urban light rail station (Line 13) and top Chinese universities. As a result of its superior locational advantage, Wudaokou quickly developed into a well-known education and commercial center in the 1990s. It contains large shopping malls and independent shops, new residential areas (built after 2000) and some old neighborhoods (built in the 1980s), university campuses, science and technology parks, and small office spaces for university students' innovation and entrepreneurship that are subsidized by the government. To summarize, Wudaokou is an area with diverse functions, which means that its citizens are also diverse. Moreover, while the vitality of many urban centers in China has declined due to COVID-19, Wudaokou remains full of economic vitality. In the past, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway tracks allowed trains to regularly pass through this area, causing great disturbance to urban traffic. Moreover, because the property rights belonged to the railways ministry, people were forbidden from entering the land on either side of the railroad tracks, which resulted in the area becoming desolate and overgrown; a sharp contrast to the vibrant and beautiful surrounding areas. Moreover, since the housing prices in this area are among the highest in Beijing and even mainland China, almost all the vacant lots had been built on, and there were almost no public urban parks available for citizens. To solve these problems, the Haidian District Government pledged to make this area a focus of urban renewal, although this was not implemented for many years. The Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway is an important support project in Beijing's preparations for the Winter Olympics; after the original railway line was transferred underground, the government requisitioned a park to be built on the vacant land. Our case study is focused on the start-up area of Jingzhang Park. The park's design began in July 2019, and its planning, design, and construction lasted for only 3 months. The park was completed and opened to the public in September 2019. The entire Jingzhang Park will continue to be constructed to form a 9 km low-line park.
The park planners have divided the park into two sections (north and south) of completely different landscape styles based on the shape and location of each site (Fig 2, 3). The north site contains the entrance that is close to the city road, and features an artificial landscape. The ground has been mainly constructed in squares and is supplemented by green spaces. The landscape has been mostly covered by hard pavement, and many rest areas have been densely arranged and contain sculptures, signs, and so on that are related to the railway's history. A small number of green plants have been planted in the flowerbeds, which are manually trimmed into geometric shapes on a regular basis. To reflect the history of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, the designer has carved information about the original railway station on the ground, and used bamboo to build a gallery that displays historical photographs. The south site is a long green corridor that is characterized by natural landscapes with mainly green areas. There is a paved pedestrian promenade in the middle, which is about 1-2 m wide and made of sand and gravel. A few rest areas have been set up. A variety of plants have been planted on both sides of the trail, while the overall landscape features a natural and wild style. More than 30 local plant species have been selected, such as Sage, Miscanthus, Pennisetum, Coreopsis, and other flowers, while some evergreen shrubs are decorated during the winter. Alike the north site, the pedestrian walkway features a similar design by using bamboo to build a gallery for photographs. In addition, old railway sleepers have been used to build a walkway in the places where the original track was located, and flowers and plants have been planted in the sleepers to form a garden for people to walk in. The planners have intended to not only allow city dwellers to experience natural scenery but to also provide a habitat for insects and other creatures.

Data collection
This study adopted a survey to collect data on the users' perspectives about the park. Before the data collection commenced, a 4-week field survey was conducted to discover the activity patterns of the park users. In the subsequent questionnaire design phase, a pilot was conducted with 15 users to test the questionnaire's suitability and conduct in-depth interviews. These users were not included in the formal questionnaire's sample. The purpose of the pilot was to test whether the questionnaire was in line with the respondents' reading habits, facilitate understanding, gain knowledge on the users' dissatisfactions with the park, and collect suggestions for improving the park's environment so that corresponding options could be displayed in the questionnaire. Based on the pilot results, the questionnaire text was adjusted, and options for measures to improve the park were formed. The formal questionnaire was divided into four parts. The first part concerned users' sociodemographic characteristics and activities. The second and third parts asked the users about their perspectives of the importance and performance of the park's CES using a five-point Likert scale (Bernard 2017) (1 = " strongly disagree," 2 = "disagree," 3 = "fair," 4 = "fairly agree," and 5 = "strongly agree"). The fourth part asked the users for their views on the park's improvement measures. In the questionnaire, nine CES sub-items were listed following Gai et al. (2022), among which eight sub-items (aesthetic experiences, recreation, nature awareness, social interaction, cultural heritage, inspiration, sense of place, and spiritual or religious enrichment) were from Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) (MA, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005) and one sub-item was an independent type of rest. Rest was added because we have noticed that this function has significantly benefitted certain groups of people. For example, cleaning and restaurant staff who worked in the nearby tertiary industry for more than 12 hours a day but did not have independent work stations and were not allowed to take a short break at their workplaces ( Figure 4).
The formal face-to-face questionnaire was conducted at the end of August 2020. This was because the autumn season is suitable for outdoor activities in Beijing, and people use parks more frequently to conduct their activities. To enhance the representativeness of the participant sample, the questionnaire took place at different times during weekdays and weekends, such as 7:00-9:00, 11:30-13:30, and 17:00-19:00. The participants were selected using stratified random sampling in the north and south sites of the park. Only those who had been in the park for a while were invited to answer the questionnaire. This allowed us to capture participant diversity as well as their full perspectives about the park. Four pre-trained graduate students were divided into two groups to conduct the questionnaire. The research team first explained the purpose of the questionnaire and answered respondents' questions to ensure that they fully understood the questionnaire and would express their true feelings.

Data analysis
We used SPSS 27 for the data analysis. First, we verified the reliability of the data using Cronbach's α coefficient. We then used descriptive statistics to analyze the participants' socioeconomic and spatial characteristics. In Jingzhang Park users had different spatial and temporal profiles (hereinafter spa-tem-profiles). We follow the three main user categories (residents, commuters and passes-by) of Gai et al. (2022) accordingly, which would allow us to identify the similarities and differences between the perspectives of residents and nonresidents. Since the aim of this study is to measure the  differences in the importance and performance of the park's CES, we used Mauchly's test of sphericity, a paired-sample t-test, and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) to verify whether the participants' perspectives of the park's CES significantly differed (Lai and Hitchcock 2015). Then, we used IPA to analyze the specific differences between the two park sites and the different groups. During this process, we used multiple linear regression analysis (MLRA) to identify the characteristics that significantly affected the users' perspectives, and grouped them accordingly. Finally, we used frequency statistical analysis to measure the perspectives of the different user groups in the two sites regarding the park's improvement measures ( Figure 5).
We applied IPA and used importance as the abscissa and performance as the ordinate to form four quadrants. The average value of each CES sub-item was contained in the quadrants. Using the center of the data method, the average of all importance and performance scores was used as the origin of the coordinate so that the relative difference between importance and performance could be better compared (Azzopardi and Nash,2013). The first quadrant was the supply-demand matching area and indicated that the supply of CES could meet people's needs. The second quadrant was the supply redundancy zone and indicated that supply exceeds demand. The third quadrant was the relatively weak area of supply and had low importance and performance scores. The fourth quadrant was the area in which the supply and demand were in urgent need of improvement, and indicated that there was a large gap between the two.

Participants' characteristics
A total of 225 people were invited to participate in the questionnaire. After deleting incomplete and insincere questionnaires, we obtained 204 valid questionnaires from the park's north (100 samples) and south (104 samples) sections. Table 2 shows the participants' sociodemographic characteristics. Compared to Haidian District's latest statistics, the participants are basically the same in terms of gender ratio, while their education level is significantly higher than the district average. The proportion of retired older adults aged over 64 years is slightly lower. Nearly one-third of the population are blue-collar workers in the service industry who provide time-intensive labor, such as meal preparation, cleaning, repairs, express delivery, sales, and so on. Their average wage is lower than that of the entire district. The ratio of residents and commuters is similar, whereas the ratio of passers-by is considerably lower.

IPA of the two park sites
The results of Cronbach's α coefficient show that each CES sub-item basically exceeds 0.6, indicating that the questionnaire data can be used for further statistical analysis. As Mauchly's test of sphericity failed, the Huynh-Feldt estimate of sphericity (ε = 1.000) was used to correct the degree of freedom, and the results show that the hypothesis is valid. The result of the individual paired-samples t-test shows that both p-values are 0.000, while the ANOVA result (F = 50.712, p < 0.01; F = 27.843, p < 0.01) further verifies that there are significant differences in the users' perspectives of the importance and performance of CES in the two sites. Table 3 shows the results of the IPA. Generally, the users' understanding of the park's CES is consistent with other studies; that is, the importance score is higher than the performance score. This shows that users attach great importance to the park's CES, but are not satisfied with its performance. The nine subitems all show similar results. It is noteworthy that "Social interaction (E)" has the lowest importance score, which shows that the users' demand for socializing in the park is relatively low. "Cultural Heritage (F)" has the highest performance score, indicating that the history and culture of the railway has been well displayed. "Social interaction (E)" has the lowest performance score, indicating that there is a lack of suitable venues to conduct social activities in. The different landscape characteristics of the sites address the different aspects of the users' evaluations. When comparing the users' ratings of the two sites, we can see that the importance score of the south site (4.230) is smaller than the north site (4.346). Regarding the performance score, the score of the former site (3.642) is greater than that of the latter site (3.578). This result shows that the users from the different sites have a very clear understanding of the importance of CES in this park, and believe it is very important. However, these users are not satisfied with the performance. This result shows that like most urban parks or green spaces, CES have received much attention from users but need to be upgraded to meet users' needs (Oteros-Rozas et al. 2018; Junyi and Chen 2019). The analysis of the difference of the gap of the importance and performance in the two sites demonstrates that the gaps of the north site are higher than those of the south. This shows that users at the north site recognize the importance of CES more, but they have less satisfaction. Among the nine sub-items, "Recreation" (C) was the sub-item that had the largest gap between supply and demand. Fig. 6 shows the users' overall perspectives about the two sites. It shows that the nine CES sub-items fall unevenly in the four quadrants. The first quadrant contains the most sub-items, which shows that the users' overall experience of the park is positive. Four sub-items of "Aesthetic experiences" (A), "Rest" (B), "Cultural heritage" (F), and "Spiritual or religious enrichment" (I) show commonality, which means that the users think that these four services for the two park sites are very important, and the users are also very satisfied. The second quadrant distributes "Inspiration" (G), which shows that users have a consensus on this service; that is, "Inspiration" (G) is an important function, but the performance is not satisfactory. "Social interaction" (E) and "Sense of place" (H) are in the third quadrant for both sites. This means that users believe these two functions are not important, and the performance is also relatively weak in both sites.
The biggest difference lies in the two sub-items of "Recreation" (C) and "Nature Awareness" (D). The users agree that these two items are of high importance, but there are significant differences in their performance. In the south site, the users believe that the performance of these two sub-items is satisfactory but think the opposite in the north site. This may be related to the very different landscape features of these two park sites. The south part has many plants and differentiated landscapes, such as sleeper gardens, bamboo corridors, and so on, which can provide richer leisure activity choices. The questionnaire revealed that this aspect was reflected in the users' activities.
A considerable portion of the users in the south site interacted with the natural environment, such as the plants, flowers, birds, and insects. For example, we observed a grandfather and grandson who came to this site every day to enjoy the wildlife.

IPA among the user profiles
We first used gender, age, education, occupation, and household income as the independent variables in the MLRA. The R 2 value was 0.198 and 0.278 for the south site and the north site respectively, which passed the F-test (Table 4). These results were somewhat different from the previous studies, as there were almost no correlations between the users' conventional sociodemographic characteristics and perspectives, and only age had a slight impact on the performance of CES. When we added the three spa-tem-profiles as the independent variables to the MLRA, the R 2 value increased to 0.613 and 0.664 for the south site and the north site respectively and F-test was passed.
The results showed that these factors had an impact on both the importance of CES, and the perceived performance. A comparison of the average importance values showed that the residents had the highest score and the commuters had the lowest score in both park sites; in particular, the "Social interaction" (E) level was far below the average (Figure 7). This may be because the commuters usually communicate more with their colleagues at work, and their office spaces provide ample social space. They may view their private social venues as being separate from their work  Figure 7. Importance values of nine CES sub-items of spa-tem-profile groups.
venues yet close to their residences, so the demand for the park to provide this service is relatively low. The three groups showed significant differences in the nine indicators of CES performance in both park sites (Figure 8). The residents had the highest scores, which were followed by the commuters and then the passers-by, and the difference between the groups was very significant. This may be due to the lack of green space in the city center's current residential areas. Most of the residential areas around the park, especially the older communities (built in the 1980s and 1990s), lack green space significantly. Therefore, to a certain extent, the park has assumed the function of a community park and satisfies the residents' needs.

Users' perspectives of the optimizing measures of CES
The frequency analysis results (Figure 9) showed that the optimization measures of the "Rest" (B) sub-item received the most approval from users; that is, the users believed it necessary to increase the amount of rest facilities. In the IPA, "Rest" (B) is located in the first quadrant. This result shows that the users attached great importance to this function. They believed that although rest options are already provided, the number and types of rest facilities should be increased. Some users even proposed to open up a separate area or build a sheltered pavilion for the purpose of resting in. The "Recreation" (C) sub-item (i.e., the addition of leisure and entertainment facilities) was the second-most recognized function by users. During the questionnaire, the participants especially expressed their demand for fitness facilities. In Chinese urban parks, the government usually provides some fitness facilities as a specific measure of China's national fitness strategy. However, Jingzhang park is different from other parks. This also was reflected in the users' hopes that the park would provide not only differentiated services but would also have some conventional leisure and recreational functions. The "Social interaction" (E) sub-item was considered the least important function by users, and improving the social space was the least recognized measure. The users' expressed that the numerous nearby restaurants, shops, and so on met their social interaction needs.
We further compared the perspectives of the three groups. The results show that the residents were more willing to improve the park and expressed strong support for eight of the above nine measures; especially the desire to increase the number of fitness venues. However, the passers-by had the lowest desire to transform and upgrade the park. The commuters were eager to increase the number of rest facilities.
We also surveyed which of the two park sites was more urgently in need of an upgrade. The results showed that 78% of the users believed that the south part needed to be upgraded by mainly focusing on improving the environment. The top three opinions were to: (1) change the paved pedestrian promenade's use of sand and gravel land to plastic or cement, (2) remove the wall between the park and the adjacent plot, and (3) strengthen the night lighting. The residents believed that the park's fence blocked people's vision and also prevented people from quickly entering the park from the buildings on both sides. The lighting in the south site was obviously insufficient, which was not conducive to users' evening activities and made people feel unsafe. The most concentrated opinion concerned the renovation of the paved areas. The users believed that having several hundred meters of sandy ground was very inconvenient. In particular, the women who worked nearby mentioned that their shoes were often trapped in the sand, while the older adults who lived nearby said that this terrain was hard to navigate with strollers.

Mismatch between the supply and demand of the urban park's CES
The IPA results show the differences between the users' perspectives of the importance and performance of Jingzhang Park's CES, which also reflects the relationship between the supply and demand of the park's CES. Dou et al. (2017) states that in high-density urban areas, citizens are relatively far away from large green parks on the outskirts of the city, and thus have relatively little access to nature. Accordingly, they will pay much attention to an urban park's CES near to their places of residence and work, and their perspectives of the importance of CES may be higher when compared to other places. Our results also verified this point. The users' perspectives of the CES of the two sites within the park showed higher importance than performance just like that of a whole park (Gai et al. 2022). This also shows a deviation between the high demand for the park's CES and the actual supply, which may originate from the preferences for the different landscape styles within the park. Overall, the satisfaction of the north site, which has an urban artificial style, is low. This may reflect the desire of the people who live in urban "cement forests" to get close to nature and experience the rural pastoral style and rich plant landscapes that the south site has. Among all the CES sub-items, "Recreation" has the largest deviation between supply and demand, which means that users are most dissatisfied with this function, and think that it needs to be improved and upgraded, similar to Riechers, Barkmann, and Tscharntke (2016)'s research. The users mainly believed that the park lacked sufficient leisure and entertainment facilities. It is worth noting that this mismatch between CES supply and demand reflects the cognitive difference between planners and users to a certain extent. From the questionnaire item on improvement proposals of the park, we learned that the users were generally dissatisfied with the sand and gravel paving in the south site because it affected accessibility and convenience. However, the designer regarded this feature as an important ecological measure that reflected rural customs while being conducive to rainwater seepage and recycling. These two opinions reveal a huge divergence in the spatial representation of the park. This highlights the challenge for policymakers and planners to match the actual needs of users with the planning and design of new parks, as increasing the coverage of urban park is an important planning strategy promoted in Beijing and many other Chinese cities.

Influence of users' spa-tem-profiles on the perception of the urban park's CES
Our research used MLRA to identify the association between the sociodemographic attributes of the users and their perspectives. Alike several of the previous studies, our study verifies that the population characteristics will affect the perception of CES (Vieira et al. 2018;Hua and Chen, 2019). However, our case study reveals that while the influence of factors such as age and income is very weak or even non-existent, the user's spa-tem-profiles (i.e., the relative spatiotemporal relationship between the users' residence/work place and the park) will have a significant impact on their perception of CES, especially performance. As the three types of park users use the park differently in terms of the frequency, duration, and type of activities, their perspectives of CES also differ significantly. The residents have the highest score for the importance and satisfaction of CES. This is different from some previous studies, as residents are usually considered to have stronger place attachment, which often negatively affects their evaluation of performance (Vieira et al. 2018). In our study, the reason for this different result may be related to how community surveys are conducted during the planning process. With the help of community organizations, the planner collects residents' opinions and needs, which may be partially reflected in the design. However, due to China's household registration management system, the community organizations include those who own real estate or rent a house in the area, but do not include those who work in the area. Therefore, the opinions of certain groups have not been collected, which affects the satisfaction with the park's CES to a certain extent.

Implications for urban policy and planning
In the current context of increasing social and economic inequities in cities, urban policy faces a great challenge regarding strengthening social integration. Many studies have shown that urban parks can help strengthen social connections and the sense of local belonging, while the lack of urban green space can exacerbate social and environmental inequities (Campbell et al. 2016). However, the existing policies rarely consider the establishment of urban green spaces that fairly serve all of society in every part of the city. Our case study shows that when urban policymakers consider the layout of urban parks, they should pay attention to socio-spatial unfairness. New urban parks should not be limited to single-function residential areas but should be extended to mixed-functional and non-residential functional areas. The beneficiaries of urban parks include not only residents but also non-residents. The analysis of Jingzhang Park, a case study located in a complex functional area, suggests that policymakers need conduct effective strategies for parks with specific site, district, and characteristic attributes. This research has shown that such parks provide special rest services that may not be found elsewhere, which need be taken into account by planners to provide site-specific case references for other similar areas.
This case study shows that recreational functionality is considered most important by users, which needs to be enhanced by the planners through different measures. The comparison of the users' perspectives about two parts of the park that have completely different landscape features shows that the use of natural vegetation may improve nature awareness services. Designers should adopt relatively fewer artificial landscapes in urban parks and incorporate more rural pastoral features. This study also investigates the users' views of promotional measures and provides guidelines for the next steps of the park's renovation, improvement, planning, and implementation, which could be utilized for similar parks.
Although public participation has become an important tool in urban planning, how to effectively absorb opinions and ideas of different stakeholders remains a challenge. Jingzhang Park is a product of implementation-oriented planning. As a flagship government project, the park had to be completed before the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. The project cycle was very short -only 3 months. During the implementation process, the government's political requirements for the park's planning goals coexisted with the designer's technical flexibility during construction; political factors also played an important role in the formation of the park's spatial form. During this process, although the designer communicated with some of the residents, it is undeniable that the differences between the planner's so-called professional (i.e., "expert" or "processed") knowledge and the public's experimental (i.e., "layman" or "personal") knowledge still exist. That is, there was not enough interaction between the two parties to form a consensus. This also led to the designer's ideals regarding the park's beauty and sustainability being out of touch with the residents' desires for practicality and safety. In this case only the residents, who were more satisfied with the park, had the opportunity to express their ideas. Yet other non-resident groups, who also benefit from the park, did not have the chance to express their views. For new urban parks in areas with complex urban functions and diverse populations, a communicative planning approach should be adopted to obtain both the commitment of and consensus between stakeholders (Khakee 1998). During this process, investigating the potential CES beneficiaries in advance can form interactive discourse through which all involved parties can explain their values, problems, and concerns. This will also help with participatory space construction and maintenance management to realize the participation of the stakeholders throughout the entire planning, construction, and maintenance management of urban parks, and thereby promote social justice and integration.

Conclusion
Although there has been much research on the CES of urban parks, there has been insufficient investigation of specific types of parks in terms of subtle population differences. Through the analysis of the park users' perspective, this study highlights that in high-density urban areas that have multiple functions, the CES of small-scale urban parks may have some mismatch between supply and demand. The users' satisfaction with the urban park's CES in a mixed-use urban area is generally lower than their perspective of its importance regardless of the design style, and because users in urban centers tend to have better expectations of parks nearby. Thus, designers must well integrate the opinions and needs of different user groups, especially non-residents. Their opinions should be expressed through diversified channels rather than be represented by the local community organizations.
However, our study also has limitations of the methods, which need to be improved in future research. First, the questionnaire was affected by non-response bias, thus the results are not representative of all the park users' views. A larger-scale study using random sampling would be necessary to better understand the complexity of the different users. Second, the users may not have an objective or accurate understanding of the questionnaire. Sometimes, people may be unable to keenly recognize or express their true feelings due to a lack of experience or reference. Therefore, a follow-up study should utilize focus groups or informative design review meetings and conduct supplementary questionnaires. By inviting representatives from different groups of participants to these workshops and through free interactions, the data can be enriched and compared to our study's one-on-one interviews and questionnaire. Such transformative learning rituals could enable the deliberative reconsideration of preferences and choices by enhancing participants' limited attention, information, and rationality (Forester 1997). This method could also help to solve planners' difficulties of listening critically and help them discover the meaning of co-creation and promote implementation with different stakeholders (Forester 1989). Finally, our case study only focused on one type of urban park in a mixed-use area located in a city center. A series of comparative studies could be conducted in a follow-up study, including multiple types of parks located in the suburbs, single-functional areas, and so on to form the common characteristics and differences of various types of parks, which may shed new light on the design of urban parks.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [52078003,51808330].