The Reinvention of Public Green Space

Abstract

Much attention has been paid to preserving land at the urban fringe, and to the negative effects of sprawl and its costs. There is increasing recognition that enhancing green, public open spaces in cities provides a strategy to make those cities more sustainable, more livable, and more equitable. This involves a new approach to public spaces that integrates infrastructure needs, takes equity into account, and reexamines the range of uses public spaces offer. We consider the potential for urban greening through a case study in the dense inner core of Los Angeles that probed local resident attitudes and values toward a more inclusive strategy, and that measured the potential value of nature's services in the urban fabric using a GIS program. [Key words: Los Angeles, public urban open space, sustainability, regreening, GIS.] Our collective perception of cities depends on the landscape of open spaces. They lace a city with their voids.… City is not so much a construction as a landscape of open spaces. -Lawrence Halprin, 1979Great parks are the key to more livable towns and cities.-Fred Kent, President, Project for Public Spaces 1 Our thanks to Robert Lake, David Sloane, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, and several reviewers for their helpful comments, and to the Haynes Foundation for its support for this research.

Factors Influencing Perceptions and Use of Urban Nature: Surveys of Park Visitors in Delhi

“…Age, gender, education level, income, retirement status, residential neighbourhood and length of stay tend to influence peoples' perception [16,91,[95][96][97]. Varied responses to nature have also been noted between communities varying in race or class [90,98]. However, Qureshi et al [97] in study in Karachi found no impact of age group or gender on the behavioural pattern of respondents.…”

Producing nature for public: Land-based urbanization and provision of public green spaces in China

“…As a critical constituent of urban landscape and infrastructure, it has been increasingly acknowledged and widely documented in the literature that urban green spaces could effectively counteract various negative environmental impacts associated with urbanization (Kabisch & Haase, 2013;Swanwick, Dunnett, & Woolley, 2003) and underpin social and ecological functioning and human well-being in urban environs (Barbosa et al, 2007;Pincetl & Gearin, 2005;Tzoulas et al, 2007;van Zoest & Hopman, 2014). Despite a broad consensus about the importance and value of urban green spaces (Haq, 2011;Villanueva et al, 2015), the dynamics of their provision remains controversial and elusive.…”

Double-crested cormorants and urban wilderness: conflicts and management

“…In relation to cormorants, site users will continue to influence the spatial extent of the colonies as cormorants will not likely expand close to areas of the Spit used extensively by humans. Therefore, we should not separate humans further, with a laissez-faire approach, from the already sparse nature areas in urban settings (see Pincetl and Gearin 2005), but focus instead on education (Adams 2005;Teillac-Deschamps et al 2009) and experiential engagement (Gill et al 2009;Gruenewald 2003). Ecological change, while sometimes aesthetically undesirable, is an inevitable outcome, and examples of species modifying their landscape can be used in experiential learning to explore this fundamental concept in ecology.…”