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Abstract |
In general, the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the importance of urban nature as outdoor recreational spaces. Urban nature includes different types of green spaces, such as lawns, community gardens, parks, urban forests and urban cemeteries. The role of urban cemeteries as outdoor places is in focus in this study. Cemeteries act as active burial grounds in the city, but also as highly vegetated urban nature that potentially provides a diversity of outdoor experiences (Nordh et al., 2017). Previous research shows cemeteries hold the potential to provide recreational opportunities, and thus invite frequent use in the dense urban context (Quinton and Duinker, 2019; Swensen et al., 2016). Researching on urban cemeteries not only shed light on knowledge formation in terms of provision of ecosystem services, specifically recreation and mental restoration (Quinton and Duinker, 2019), but also help understand the role of this special type of green spaces in the urban fabric. Hence, this study aims to understand (1) who are using cemeteries and what experiential value(s) are highly valued during the pandemic (2) how important are urban cemeteries to local people and (3) what are the challenges for sustainable management of urban cemeteries as multifunctional green spaces. |
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