What's the Story with Parks?

Green spaces that include public parks, open recreational spaces and urban forests are essential elements of urban built environment. They contribute greatly to urban livability and vitality of the cities and can be significant contributors to their sustainable development. According to several scholars, organized open green spaces offer a multi-fold of benefits to cities in various perspectives including physical, environmental, economical, and social aspects. Open green spaces supply ecosystem services ranging from maintenance of biodiversity to the regulation of urban climate in the cities. Public parks can reduce energy use in cooling the buildings, and largely decrease the levels of noise in over crowded cities depending on their quantity, quality and the distance from the source of noise pollution. They also offer facilities for various outdoor activities, provide respite from the crowded and busy city life where people can have contact with nature, and also accommodate daily pedestrian traffic. Availability of organized open green spaces to a large extent is crucial for the creation of an attractive image of a city. Attractive open green spaces can complement the architectural articulation of the surrounding built environment, improve the value and desirability of the surrounding residential areas and create a space for people to orientate themselves with the greater part of the city. In this context, a general argument has emerged that good quality organized open green spaces constitute positive environment that increase the value of the surrounding built environment.   For example, sustainable open green spaces in cities foster a creative image, engender socio-economic benefits, create comfortable environment and ensue a healthy lifestyle among the people.  Public parks in residential areas are essential elements of urban built environment and can be significant contributors to sustainable development of urban areas. Public parks and recreational spaces have more significance for the development of sustainable cities because they contribute greatly to livability and vitality of the cities. Therefore, the studies of public parks have become an integral part of the sustainability analysis of the cities. Properly planned and designed open green spaces greatly add to the aesthetic quality, bring greater satisfaction to the inhabitants of surroundings residential areas, and create a restorative environment which cannot be neglected as they influence the well-being and health of inhabitants.Influential attributes of public parks at the local residential areas are essential elements towards the vibrancy of parks and are dependent on several demographic, physical, spatial, and local transportation (traffic) attributes.  An organization called Project for Public Spaces (PPS) evaluated thousands of public spaces around the  world and found that sustainable and successful organized open green spaces (public parks and recreational facilities) have four key attributes. The attributes include a good image of the open green space that offer comfort and attractiveness;  accessibility and linkages; activities for people to get engaged with; and sociable places where inhabitants meet or take their visitors. The vitality, viability, and judgment of the place as being good or bad are determined by availability and functions of elements available in the open green space. For this purpose a PLACE diagram developed by PPS, illustrates inter-linkage and coordination various attributes and elements of open green spaces in hierarchical manner of, which could contribute to the sustainability and success of the public spaces such as public parks. According to the Place diagram, the center element (identified as “PLACE” in the diagram) can be identified as a specific place, such as a street corner, a playground, a public field or a park outside a building or in a neighbourhood. This place can then be evaluated according to the four criteria namely access and linkage, comfort and image, uses and activities, and sociability located in the ring adjacent to the central ring. An examination of the place diagram further revealed that in the ring outside these main criteria are a number of intuitive or qualitative aspects by which a place is judged. The next outer ring shows the quantitative aspects that can be measured by statistics or research. All these attributes may play a pivotal role in offering experiences and benefits depending their level of availability, yet the sustainability of the space is influenced by their overall contributions and therefore all the elements need to be interlinked, integrated and purposeful. The possible attributive areas that aids in creating sustainable and vibrant public parks are to certain extent known and plausible, yet how much and to what degree each attributive area contributes is not adequately known and should be investigated further. Also, the evidences of such studies in developing countries and particularly in cities of South Africa are scarce.  Therefore, this blog will seek to explore how sustainable public parks can be engendered by considering the major control attributes that include engineering infrastructure, activities, sociability, and image, comfort and environment particularly in the context of cities of South Africa.