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Jamison Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia - Nov 2008.jpg
  • News Barcelona green space plan could improve health of 30,000, study finds, The Guardian (Mar 30, 2023)

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Open spaces here refers to anything from public places in urban environments to rural wilderness.

(introduction needed)

Community action projects

Events

Community orchards

Attribution: Philralph

Community orchards offer a way of saving vulnerable old orchards and opportunities to plant new ones, providing places for quiet contemplation or local festivities, a reservoir of local varieties of fruit and a refuge for wild life. (see also Open spaces UK)

Open spaces and Sharing Cities

Open spaces are key to the health and vitality of cities. Walkable, safe, green spaces increase the possibilities for people to meet and nurture relationships beyond family, friends, and colleagues. But a discussion about Sharing Cities can't focus on open spaces alone. Gentrification should be a part of that discussion. If we, promoters of Sharing Cities, do not manage to address the tension of gentrification by finding strategies to secure the livelihoods of the people who produce the urban commons and to disarm profit-maximizing interests, then the tragedy of the urban commons will only be reinforced. The way the sharing economy discourse was co-opted by profit-oriented platforms shows how quickly Sharing Cities could fall over the barrier and become just another way to reproduce existing patterns of domination.

Social capital is shaped and molded by space. This same social capital is crucial in the successful self-organization of the commons, according to the late political economist Elinor Ostrom. Thus, in places where people can mobilize social capital, decades of urban planning practices are being challenged.

Digitalization is also an opportunity: It allows people to collect and make use of data in creative ways on an unprecedented scale. This has a huge potential for the urban commons. City administrators hold large amounts of land data that is so far hard to access or use, but when it becomes open data, it can unleash bottom-up innovations.

Last but not least, we should not forget that practices that foster Sharing Cities may have actually been there for decades. Some of those practices may be seen as old-fashioned, but might prove useful today. Adrien Labaeye[1]

See also Germany, South Africa

Resources

Quotes

"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment." Jane Austen

Video

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News and comment

2022

  • News Linking protected areas from Yellowstone to the Yukon shows the value of conserving large landscapes, not just isolated parks and preserves, The Conversation (Apr 26, 2022)

2020

Rewild to mitigate the climate crisis, urge leading scientists, Oct 14[2] ...Climate change solutions

2019

Green spaces and community assets, new models for new developments, May 2[3] ...Open spaces UK

2018

It’s official: London will become the world’s first National Park City, Feb 10[4]

2017

Can parks save Philadelphia? Feb 21[5] ...Pennsylvania

Public Park Promotes Native Biodiversity in Hong Kong, Jan 29[6] ...China news

The UK’s top 10 greenest cities, Jan 16[7]

2013

From New York to Ealing, local parks are being given a new lease of life, november 6[8]

2011

Map of Scotland's urban green space a world first, 14 September[9]

See also

local information can be found, or shared, via our many location pages

External links

  • Project for Public Spaces, nonprofit organization based in New York dedicated to creating and sustaining public places that build communities. Planning and design rooted in the community form the cornerstone of PPS’s work. Building on the techniques of William H. Whyte's "Street Life Project," this approach involves looking at, listening to, and asking questions of the people in a community to discover their needs and aspirations. W

References

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Keywords pinned topic
Authors Phil Green
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 13 pages link here
Aliases Open spaces
Impact 718 page views
Created August 5, 2015 by Phil Green
Modified January 14, 2024 by StandardWikitext bot
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