Parks are important urban design settings to promote physical activity within urban areas. However, existing park audit tools often do not address the unique challenges of high-density areas, especially in Asian contexts. This study presents the development and testing of the audiT tool for Activity-friendly Parks in denSe urban areas (TAPS) that support park-related physical activity in highly dense urban settings. Created through a Delphi consultation process that incorporated expert consensus, TAPS focuses on five key domains: park surroundings and accessibility, activity areas, facilities and amenities, aesthetics, and safety. The tool was tested in 25 parks across Tokyo, Japan. Of the 24 park attributes identified by interdisciplinary experts, open/green spaces and pathways had the highest expert consensus. Inter-rater reliability was measured using Cohen’s kappa and percent agreement; validity was confirmed through comparison to a gold standard. Across the items, 91.1% achieved a kappa of over 0.4 indicating at least moderate agreement and 95.9% showed more than 70% agreement. The overall dimension validity displayed 87.5% agreement. TAPS is a user-friendly tool that provides a reliable and valid evaluation framework for improving parks to support physical activity in dense urban areas in Asia.
Luo, Y., Motomura, M., Zhao, J., Hanibuchi, T., Nakaya, T., Shibata, A., … & Koohsari, M. J. (2024). Developing and testing an audit tool for activity-friendly parks in dense urban areas of Asia. Cities & Health. 9(2), 319-331.
