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Picture your local patch of green space. It could be a park, nature reserve, playground, BMX track, playing field or allotment.
Whatever it is, imagine that overnight it just vanished. What would it be like if it wasn’t there?
Where do children go to play? Where do you go to walk the dog or just to relax? Do you start jogging along the high street instead? Where do you have your summer picnics and winter snowball fights? How do you cycle to work without using busy main roads? Where do you hang out with your friends?
And, instantly, where you live is less attractive visually too. This sounds like a minor thing, but plenty of research has shown that just being able to see green space affects our wellbeing much more than you might imagine. Amazingly, people who are ill get well quicker, distance from green space is directly linked to health and stress levels go into freefall just by spending time in them.
Something more subtle happens too, but it might take a bit longer for you to see it. Given time, it will seem like where you live is just a neighbourhood - and less like a community. Our sense of belonging and pride in where we live is heavily influenced by these community spaces. We share our green spaces, regardless of age, gender, cultural background and lifestyles so it’s not surprising that they often act as community hubs. Thirty years of working with communities has shown us that diverse communities can be united though a concern for their local patch of green. It can be the first step for many people to becoming active members of their community. The confidence, connections and skills learnt here become a catalyst for future activity, led by the people who best know what needs to be done – the community themselves.
The space you pictured earlier is very unlikely to physically disappear, but if we stop investing time and resources in it then it might as well do. Uncared for green spaces are no longer somewhere you want to go: overgrown access routes make us worried about crime, they attract anti-social behaviour and litter, it’s harder for different parts of the community to meet and people start to lose pride in where they live. Last year 87% of us used our local green space, but in some places where they are unloved and neglected this can fall to 1%.
It’s easy to take these places for granted, but if we don’t take action to ensure they are looked after we may lose them.
Our friends at Marks and Spencer have been helping us create urban oases across the UK.
Take a glimpse behind the scenes of creating an urban oasis. The Victoria Gardens Blog…
Community Spaces is a £50 million open grants programme that is managed by Groundwork UK as an Award Partner to the Big Lottery Fund.
Neighbourhoods Green is a partnership project which aims to highlight the importance of green space for residents of social housing.
We work alongside communities, public bodies, private companies and voluntary sector organisations.
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Before the park was created, it was just concrete. We've met so many people we didn't know lived here before. So we've built a community by having the park here, where before we didn't have that. - Lorraine Bird, Abbs Cross resident
