The Obvious Use of an Urban Park

Lars Stenberg, Sensory Trust

A response to an article in Horticulture Week (8 April 2004) about the successes of Bryant Park in New York started me thinking about the uses of parks in this country. The article described the events, services and activities - yoga classes, film screenings, wireless web access, even a French-style carousel - that have helped transform Bryant Park from a dangerous haunt of drug addicts and muggers into a popular recreation centre for local people.

The writer of the response letter (Horticulture Week 15 April 2004) questioned whether this use of space is what we Brits want from our urban greenspaces. She felt that these activities would detract from the “obvious use of an urban park: to provide a small piece of country-side in a city environment”.

But is that the obvious use...?

Contact with the natural world is only a small part of the role of a successful urban park.

Precisely because it is situated in a city, with the attendant restrictions on space (and usually budget), an urban park needs to be many things to many different user groups. On any given day it may need to be, by turns, a teen hang-out, a staff canteen, a schoolroom, a classical concert venue and a homeless shelter.

The idea that an urban park is a little piece of faux countryside designed so that those of us unfortunate enough to live in a city can see what we’re missing is as quaint as it is patronising. The Dickensian image of cities as grimy, smoky hells is way behind us. Many of us live happily in cities our whole lives.

An urban park can offer contact with the natural world, and it can offer relaxation. Relaxation takes different forms for different people. People sitting in a park looking at the trees, having a barbeque with their family, or running with their Walkman on may all be relaxing in their own ways. Many of these users will experience, and often enjoy, contact with the natural world as a secondary experience during the primary activities they are undertaking – for instance smelling the freshly cut grass while sitting under the spreading boughs of an oak at an open air music recital.

It might be a peculiarly English thing to suggest that other people doing things in a park spoils the park, that somehow someone reading a book – or surfing the internet with their wireless laptop - is going to upset other people. The reality is that parks empty of people are intimidating, potentially dangerous, and consequently underused. In urban parks, hell is a lack of other people.

More important than relaxation or a chance for contact with nature, urban public space - parks included - is where society takes place. Ours is a multicultural society, and a society which is increasingly divided into discrete market groups. We have less and less chance to interact with people outside of these groups. Urban public space still allows us the pleasure of people-watching. It is our last true common ground and it should be managed as such, not squandered for a single use or for a single user group.