PREHealth: User surveys of urban open spaces in Darmstadt. National Report Germany.

The surveys take place within the framework of the EU-funded research project PREHealth, in which 4 European cities - Darmstadt (Germany), Eindhoven (The Netherlands), Athens (Greece) and Győr (Hungary) - have joined forces to improve the use and design of health-promoting urban spaces. The project’s main objective is to encourage city dwellers to use green and blue infrastructures in urban open spaces more actively in their everyday lives. One focus is to place the user's needs at the centre of planning in order to maximise the benefits for their health and well-being. Face-to-face and online surveys were carried out. The objective was to identify 1) the users of the open spaces including their socio-demographic characteristics and lifestyle, 2) their patterns of behaviour in the open space, and 3) the benefits or improvements that the users expect from the use of the open space. This report describes the results obtained in Darmstadt and considers the face-to-face and the online survey separately.