Objective As we enter a post-epidemic era, it appears that more and more people are finding solace in outdoor leisure activities such as camping and picnics. Responding to this trend, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has launched a program for pilot opening and sharing of city parks and green spaces across the country. The central urban area of Beijing is a relatively densely populated and functionally rich urban area in China, and the distribution of parks shows a trend of gradual increase from the center outwards, but the current status of scattered distribution and single function of the parks will impose certain limitations on urban space in the future. This research analyzes comprehensive parks in the central urban area of Beijing to determine their suitability for opening and sharing.

Methods The research defines opening and sharing suitability and identifies six factors influencing the opening and sharing suitability of parks, including three built environment factors — park accessibility, and functional density and functional mixing degree of points of interest (POI), and three internal attribute factors — degree of crowd concentration, green space per capita, and available activities in parks. In the research, the entropy-weighted method is used to calculate the information entropy and information utility value of each evaluation factor and the weights of the six factors. Then the data corresponding to the six factors of each park are processed and the individual scores of each park are obtained, and the individual items are weighted and added together to obtain the value of opening and sharing suitability. Finally, the opening and sharing suitability of each park is ranked and the parks are classified according to the trend of data distribution into three categories: Parks suitable for immediate opening and sharing, parks requiring delayed opening and sharing, and parks unsuitable for opening and sharing. The geospatial landing of these parks was carried out according to the types, the parks were analyzed holistically and conclusions were drawn.

Results The research discovers that there are 17 parks suitable for immediate opening and sharing such as Chaoyang Park, Olympic Forest Park, and Qingfeng Park, 22 parks requiring delayed opening and sharing such as Shuangxiu Park, Haidian Park, and Bagou Mountain Park, and 5 parks unsuitable for opening and sharing such as Beijing Xuanwu Garden, and Yongdingmen Park. The analysis results also reflect the geographical distribution of these parks with different opening and sharing suitability, with parks suitable for immediate opening and sharing concentrated in the northeastern part of Beijing, centrally located between the 3rd and 5th Ring Roads within Chaoyang District, while parks requiring delayed opening and sharing and those unsuitable for opening and sharing are mainly located in the central southern part of Beijing.

Conclusion In conclusion, opening and sharing is an inevitable trend of future city development, a scientific and systematic evaluation system is a prerequisite for good opening and sharing and a basis for future development, and the construction of opening and sharing parks is also an important guide for sustainable city development. Moreover, based on the entropy weighted TOPSIS model, the weights for the six factors in this research are more scientific, revealing the significant correlation between opening and sharing suitability and urban functional zoning. Among the built environment factors, park accessibility has the greatest impact on park opening and sharing, and among internal attribute factors, park green space per capita has the greatest impact on park opening and sharing. The comprehensive analysis reveals that, the parks suitable for immediate opening and sharing are located in areas adjacent to Beijing’s ring roads and transport hubs, and in areas with diverse and mixed functions, as well as better construction conditions and higher popularity. Under the influence of multi-dimensional factors, the opening and sharing suitability shows strong correlation with urban functional zoning, which also provides a data reference for identifying the areas that are the first to carry out the pilot opening and sharing of parks. These findings also offer a new perspective on the problems in setting weights in the park examination work, that is, using the entropy weighted TOPSIS model for weight calculation to make the weights more scientific. At the same time, the research also provides a new direction for the future development of comprehensive parks, that is, what kind of parks have the potential for sustainable city development, and what kind of parks are more satisfying to the needs of people. In addition to these directions, the research also points out the development ways of parks, such as how to choose the location of the parks to be constructed, what to be constructed in the parks may make parks more human-friendly, and how to build parks to meet the needs of various activities.