The Effects of Urban Green Space on Depressive Symptoms of Mid-Aged and Elderly Urban Residents in China: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

The aim of this study is to assess the impacts of urban green space on depressive symptoms among Chinese urban residents aged 45 and older. In total, 7397 urban respondents were included in this study. Each respondent participated in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study Wave 3 (2015). Environmental-level variables were retrieved from the National Bureau of Statistics database. Both unadjusted and adjusted methods were used in the multilevel regression analysis. Almost one-third of the sample population suffered from depressive symptoms (31.20%). The multilevel logistic regression model showed that green coverage ratio of city-built districts is negatively associated with the prevalence of depressive symptoms among urban mid-aged (OR = 0.79, p < 0.05) and elderly (OR = 0.75, p < 0.05) residents, and the public recreational green space helps to reduce elderly people’s depressive symptoms (OR = 0.77, p < 0.05). This study adds insights about the impact of green space and other environmental factors on depressive symptoms among mid-aged and elderly urban dwellers. It is important to provide enough and accessible overall urban green spaces; additionally, attention should also be paid to specific green space forms such as public recreational green space.

Management-Oriented Upgrade and Construction of Urban Green Space Management System in Wuxi

With the widespread application of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in urban green space management system, the refinement of greening management puts forward the demand for upgrading the system. Taking the construction of urban green space management system in Wuxi as an example, this paper reverses the conventional operation of building database before system, and puts forward the method of management-oriented system upgrading. Through the research on the status quo of urban greening management, starting from the analysis of management requirements, the management requirements are transformed into system design requirements, so that the system upgrade is guided by the urban greening management requirements. It solves the problems of large amount of and time-consuming data input during the upgrading and construction of the system, which leads to long process and data lag when it is put into use. After the rapid upgrade, along with the refinement of daily management, the system has been continuously improved, and has received good results in the depth and breadth of data.