As a vital component of public space, public open space (POS) is considered crucial for community regeneration. However, most evaluation studies have focused on the geographical attributes of POS, and those assessing renewal holistically in terms of residents’ everyday lives are limited. Drawing on the Ruijin community in Shanghai, this study compared networks of public space layout and residents’ daily behaviours as a function of their structure and individual nodes using the Social Network Analysis method to explore the characteristics and evaluate the effectiveness of renewal. The results showed: (1) the current renewal while increasing recreational opportunities and improving spatial appearance has had a limited effect at the social level. (2) There are differentiations between the two networks. POS plays different roles in the behavioural network, including comprehensive, intermediary, and directional nodes. (3) The core POSs have frequent interactions and strong links with specific types of public facilities than the periphery. Therefore, we suggested that POS renewal should be conducted according to the rule of “core preceding periphery, comprehensive high-efficiency preceding single low-efficiency” and explain the necessity of public participation in the process. These findings shed light on the potential mechanism of the impact of POS on everyday life and rethink the construction management and governance of urban community regeneration in the era of sustainability.

Public open space (POS) confers numerous physical and mental health benefits to people throughout life. The study applies POI and other multi-dimensional methods to examine the intergenerational equity of POS within a 15-min living circle of old communities in high-density cities. Firstly, an evaluation system for the comprehensive POS supply level in the community is constructed from the perspective of the quantity, quality, and spatial distribution of POS. Secondly, based on the idea of all-age sharing, the population in the community is divided into children, young and middle-aged, and elderly, and the factor “adaptation space share” is introduced to supplement the intergenerational equity evaluation system. The study takes Caoyang New Village in Shanghai as an example and the districts of the community committee as the basic evaluation units. The results show that the comprehensive supply of POS in Caoyang New Village is relatively high but there is still a mismatch between supply and demand; the intergenerational equity level is medium, and spatial alienation exists between POS supply and intergenerational equity; and the adaptation space share for children is much higher than that for the elderly, young and middle-aged people. Furthermore, young and middle-aged people are found to form a marginal group in spatial sharing and resource allocation. Finally, it is proposed that in community POS planning, attention should be focused on the differences in population age structure and on spatial cultural attributes and functional compounding on the basis of ensuring the comprehensive service of POS, so as to promote all-age sharing in community POS.

With the continuous expansion of urban construction land, the green belts aiming for ecological protection have ensured a sustainable and effective function of regional ecosystem services. At the same time, these ecological green belts are expected to develop their compound service potentials with the development of cities. In order to meet the increasing demand of urban residents for the recreational utilization of urban green space, the primary function of the ecological green belts has transformed from being purely ecological to a combination of being ecological and recreational. Based on social media data, which has the characteristics of a large amount of accessible geographic information, this study used multiple regression models to analyze the recreational utilization intensity of ecological protection green belts with a case study in the green belt of Shanghai, China. The research results showed that the internal elements (total external area, water area, etc.) of the Shanghai green belt have positive correlations with its recreational utilization. The impact of external factors was inconclusive on the recreational utilization of the outer forest belt (the number of subway stations in accessibility factors was negatively correlated; the number of cultural facilities and the number of restaurants in the surrounding service facilities were positively related). Combined with the “Shanghai City Master Plan (2017–2035)”, this study suggests potential zones for the recreational transformation of the Shanghai green belt, provides a theoretical and practical basis for improving the recreational utilization of an urban ecological protection green belt and contributes to the sustainable development of ecological protection green belts in high-density cities.

Urban parks are increasingly confronted with a mismatch between static, blueprint-driven planning paradigms and residents’ diverse and temporally dynamic recreational demands. Recreational behavior is shaped by both relatively stable landscape attributes and time-varying environmental conditions. However, this dynamic perspective remains insufficiently incorporated into current research and planning practice. This study examines Fuzhou Hot Spring Park in Fujian Province, China, using all-day, park-wide field observations to investigate recreational behavior, static landscape factors, and temporal environmental factors. Time-segmented multiple linear regression models were employed to analyze the effects of environmental factors and their interactions on recreational behavior across different periods of the day. The results reveal marked spatiotemporal differentiation in park use. (1) Middle-aged visitors dominate the park’s spatiotemporal use patterns, exhibiting dispersed use in the morning, clustering in small nodal spaces during the daytime, and expansion into larger areal spaces. (2) The driving mechanisms of recreational behavior vary across time periods. Stable landscape elements, especially facilities, exert persistent effects, but these are further modified by temporal environmental factors. For middle-aged and older adults, microclimatic conditions are a key factor shaping temporal fluctuations in visitation: daytime heat weakens the effects of connectivity and facilities, whereas nighttime relative humidity, combined with facilities, encourages longer stays. Regarding behavior types, relaxation activities (RA) and social interaction activities (SIA) often co-occur and are both supported by resting facilities, but RA depend more strongly on microclimatic conditions, whereas SIA are more closely associated with soundscape. These findings inform dynamic regulation and adaptive design strategies for urban parks and provide practical guidance for adaptive planning and improved demand–supply alignment.