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Although social sustainability plays a crucial role in the sustainable development agenda, there is a scarcity of research that clearly defines and fully operationalizes this concept. This study seeks to fill this gap in the literature by creating a comprehensive measurement scale to evaluate social sustainability in the context of urban parks. According to the literature review, social sustainability is identified as a multidimensional concept, encompassing eight key dimensions in urban parks: identity, place attachment, cohesion, safety, equity, facilities, comfort, and accessibility. The validity, reliability, and dimensions of the social sustainability scale for urban parks are examined using factor analysis. To explore the idea that user evaluations of urban parks can be employed as a method to ensure social sustainability, user feedback was collected for the study. The article evaluates data from 120 participants in Alaeddin Hill Park, located in Konya, Turkey—a site selected for its potential to best reflect the identified dimensions. This study reveals the relationships between different dimensions of social sustainability that influence the parks social sustainability performance at the urban park scale. Additionally, it provides insights aimed at improving park design quality. The findings of the study indicate that the park’s social sustainability is at a moderate level, with identity identified as the most influential dimension. On the other hand, the dimension that most negatively impacts sustainability performance is safety, primarily due to low perceptions of safety caused by inadequate lighting, the predominant use of the park by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and a general lack of security.
Büyükağaçcı et al. (Sat,) studied this question.