Reimagining (Sub-) Urban Parks: The challenges of negotiating conflicting interests in a park system master planning process (original) (raw)

Reimagining (Sub-)Urban Parks

2018

The demand for green spaces in highly urbanised, metropolitan cities is well documented. However, adjacent to or surrounding these densely populated urban centres are extensive areas of newer suburbs, where land use and public space demands differ from those found in large urban cities. Though dependent on the age of a suburb and its associated societal changes, the demands made upon suburban green spaces are changing. However, little research has focused on ageing suburban park systems, which today may be managed by multiple administrative entities. The development of a master plan for the seventy-year-old network of Bergen County parks, located in north-eastern New Jersey, approximately 30 km outside of New York City, is a case study that illustrates this environmental planning challenge. Competing user interests can be traced to conflicting demands and expectations for open space amenities, highlighting the difficulty of providing an equal voice to all park user populations. A pr...

Community Participation Strategies in Planning for Urban Parks

Parks, open spacesor green areas could improve people’s quality of life and enhance the city’s environmental quality. This paper reviews current thinking about the benefits of parks, examines the criteria on park values and describes some of the strategies and the applicability of these strategies in park planning. Employing Q-methodology in getting public opinion on issues relevant to the research will increase awareness among the local community groups to preserve the values and amenities of the park and its environmental setting. The outcome of this research offers essential insights on the preferences and community values towards successful urban parks.

Got green? addressing environmental justice in park provision

We present a pragmatic approach to assist planners in addressing racial inequities in park access. Utilizing the Los Angeles metropolitan region as an example, we used Thiessen polygons to delineate a service area for each park, and described potential park congestion or 'pressure' in each park service area. Results show that Latinos, African-Americans, and low-income groups in general were likely to live close to parks with higher potential park congestion. On the other hand, predominantly White, high-income areas were typically located close to parks with lower potential park congestion levels. The park service area analysis presented here facilitates the identification of areas with greater park need and provides a pragmatic way to redress existing disparities in park access. Built into a set of web-based decision support tools, the approach fosters greater community participation and empowers local stakeholders in the process of park provision.

Planning for environmental justice in an urban national park

Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2009

Urban national parks were designed in the 1970s to bring nature and recreational opportunities to socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the USA. Using the theoretical frame of environmental justice, this paper discusses findings of a recent survey of visitors to Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – the United States' largest urban national park. Findings show park visitors were predominantly white, affluent, and lived nearby. People of colour travelled further, were significantly less likely to be return visitors, and were less inclined to use the park for active recreation. Seemingly, this park fails to meet the needs of the disadvantaged urban communities for whom it was created, a problem that may also affect other parks in the United States and potentially parks in other countries. Park planners and managers can take practical steps to increase accessibility to this park for people of colour and low-income earners, and should monitor other parks for patterns of ethno-racially differentiated access and utilisation.

Some Different Meanings Attached to a City Park and Community Gardens

Landscape Journal, 1987

How do people use and value urban open spaces such us city parks and community gardens? Are the values attached to open spaces by different groups such as users and non-users similar or different? Do officials charged with managing urban recreation have the same perceptions of the benefits of open spaces as do city residents who use or puss by them? These questions formed the basis of a comparative study of an adjacent city park and community gardens in Sacramento during 1982-85. The study compares the attitudes of users, nonusers, and government officials toward a public park and user-managed community gardens. The historical development, planning and design process, management and maintenance, governmental perceptions, site use, and user and non-user attitudes associated with each site are compared. The different meanings attached by users, non-users, and government officials to both sites are contrasted. In conclusion, a conceptual framework for understanding the social context of parks versus gardens in cities is presented. rancis

The Public Value of Urban Parks

Parks have long been recognized as major contributors to the physical and aesthetic quality of urban neighborhoods. But a new, broader view of parks has recently been emerging. This new view goes well beyond the traditional value of parks as places of recreation and visual assets to communities, and focuses on how policymakers, practitioners, and the public can begin to think about parks as valuable contributors to larger urban policy objectives, such as job opportunities, youth development, public health, and community building.

The Future Prospects of Urban Public Parks: Findings - Informing Change

2017

Public parks are long-standing and familiar features of the urban environment. For many people, visiting parks is an integral part of everyday life in the contemporary city. Yet parks in the UK are at a possible 'tipping point', prompting important concerns about their sustainability. Parks face essential challenges over funding and management, as well as questions of unequal access and competing demands on use. This study of public parks in the city of Leeds focused on how they have changed through time, how they are used today, and what their future prospects might be.

(Re)Greening the City: Urban Park Restoration as a Spatial Fix

Geography Compass, 2010

Urban sustainability has emerged as a priority field of research for urban geographers. This article offers a critical review of the park restoration and green city movements. I will begin by using an urban political ecology lens to engage in the geographical history of urban parks in America. I will explore the prior treatment of park making in America, paying particular attention to the historiographic issues raised and the large gap in the literature: that parks were engineered urban ecosystems in a political-economic setting and set into the historical–geographical crises of capitalism. I will examine the ways that parks, as engineered urban ecosystems, acted as a spatial fix to the crises of capitalism under dialectical policy regimes. I will argue that parks have never truly been democratic spaces and have suffered under egalitarian policy regimes, while prospering under elitist policy regimes. This article is illustrated with case study material from research on park restoration in Boston, Massachusetts, and concludes with an examination of the future of urban parks.

Part Two: From City Parks to Regional Green Infrastructure

… People and Nature …, 2006

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Massachusetts Press at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Humane Metropolis: People and Nature in the 21st-Century City by an authorized administrator of ...