• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.50-60
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• 2019

In the late 1980s, a financial crisis and Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) in green space services brought with it a profound impact on the quality of parks in the UK. Such government projects, e.g. Urban Task Force (1999) and Public Parks Assessment (2001), aimed to raise the awareness of the severity of the declining standards of urban parks. Since the late 1990s, the UK governments (The New Labour (1997-2010) and The Conservative Government (2010-2019)), have often adopted community-led governance schemes to enhance the quality of parks and address problems derived from the financial crisis. Accordingly, community groups, notably 'Friends of', enlarged their involvement in the decision-making process of park management. However, there is little empirical evidence concerning the impact of community-led governance on park management, in particular, the effect on the users' perceptions of park use. This study explored the context of community-led park management to reclassify the level of build-up of governance underlined by 'A Ladder of Citizen Participation'. In addition, questionnaire surveys were conducted around two Sheffield district parks, which are located in deprived areas. As a result, community involvement in the status quo of UK urban park management has changed its form of governance based on the extent of involvement in the decision-making process. The forms of governance could be categorised in three levels: general, active, and predominant governance, where the extents of decision-making and sharing responsibility vary. The results obtained through the questionnaires show that one park (active governance), which has a stronger tendency of sharing responsibility to get involved in park management, had better contribution to park management and positive impacts on users' satisfaction than the other park (general governance). The findings highlight that stronger governance in partnerships with the non-public sectors can shed light on current and future park management through a shift in sharing responsibility for park management.