Parks breathe fresh impetus into economies

BEIJING — Fine spring sunshine, burgers sizzling on grills and the beat of a rock band pulsing across Beijing's Chaoyang Park set a festive mood as the Juicy Burger Festival was in full swing during last month's May Day holiday.

After savoring the last bite of her beef burger, Zhou Ziyue, a university student in Beijing, headed into the nearby mall inside the park. Around her, people lined up for an e-sports competition, while a pop-up store for Black Myth: Wukong, a hit Chinese video game, was met with long queues.

"The last time I came, the crowd wasn't even a third of what I'm seeing today," said Zhou, surprised.

In January, Beijing rolled out a set of measures that encourage urban parks to blend culture, tourism and commerce. Guided by these policies, the park, located in Chaoyang district in eastern Beijing, drew over 470,000 visitors during the five-day holiday, a 60.8 percent jump compared with the same period last year.

Through IP collaborations, e-sports games and festival markets, the park ranked third in Beijing in visitor numbers during the holiday, trailing only the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven, the top two parks that feature historical attractions.

Chaoyang Park is only one of many Chinese urban parks that are transforming green areas into lively venues for consumers by exploring exciting possibilities for leisure and enjoyment.

During the holiday, the country's urban parks received over 212 million visitors, and hosted nearly 10,000 commercial and cultural events that generated more than 6.8 billion yuan ($1 billion) in spending, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

In Shanghai's Zhongshan Park, a temporary wooden coffee stall appeared on the prime lawn during the May Day holiday, where visitors learned latte art to live music. The stall occupied just five or six square meters — a wooden hut, a few tents and scattered seating — leaving the rest of the 400-square-meter lawn open for grass, sky and room to breathe.

"Parks don't lack coffee shops," said Wang Jing, deputy general manager of a local landscaping company that operates Zhongshan Park. "What they lack are coffee shops that know how to play with ideas and assemble experiences."

Commercial activities in parks, she added, should "aim to be pleasing", using services and content to activate spaces and enhance the quality and dynamism of public areas.

The park hosted over a dozen such events in May: two live concerts, an intangible cultural heritage dough modeling workshop and an international flower festival that helped generate about 2.6 million yuan in consumer spending inside the park. The park, previously regarded as "a landscape to be viewed", has transformed into "an immersive space to be experienced".

By the end of 2025, Shanghai had built 1,100 parks, while Beijing, home to 1,136 parks, plans to build 200 more in the next ten years. In 2025 alone, Beijing spent 4.2 billion yuan on park construction and maintenance covering ecological restoration, facility upgrades and heritage preservation. In January, enterprises were also allowed to operate parks under contract for up to five years, allowing more willing businesses to participate in the long-term operation of parks.

Behind the park boom across Chinese cities is a shift in thinking about urban construction: less about just building, more about making the most of what they already have — through spatial design, living environments and governance — to upgrade residents' quality of life.

At the World Mayors Dialogue held from May 13 to 15 in Chengdu, a southwestern Chinese city, mayors from around the world praised the city's eco-friendly environment and its efforts to improve urban living.

XINHUA