Urban Green, the charity set up some five years ago to manage (and develop) the city’s parks and open spaces, great and small, celebrated or neglected, has been voted out by the City Council who have decided they want to resume stewardship*.
Urban Green attracted critics. It attracted critics before it was a thing indeed. The chief favour of these criticisms as I could see it, was this was ‘privatisation’ by another route and that ‘commercial interests’ would steer the new charitable body. I did in fact find a vendor of refreshments with a pitch in a popular park who told me Urban Green had hiked the ‘fee’ for the right to sell in the park by 270 per cent!
My own direct experience was slightly more favourable. The piece of open space (that in fact has no legal protection as I am informed) I call ‘Battlefield’ has been given much more attention in a good way in recent years. It is a public park in all but name, and maintenance has included improved facilities and encouragement to use the space recreationally. This could go further with some enlightened interventions, but the security of public access and involvement compared with what was planned by the City Council only a few years before, is much to be welcomed.
However, in some dark corner of what are the Council’s Planning Department and co-workers in mischief, there have been hints that the Council has designs on ‘Battlefield’. I don’t not what these are, but I fear the worst. Urban Green might be a mixed bag of tricks, but compared to the record of the City Council, I fancy they have done a good job.
* One query about the replacement of Urban Green by the Council’s Environmental service is where is the money coming from and how will the networks of volunteering and public interactions be continued from this point on?
Meanwhile …
Some photographs of a favourite ‘ruban’ place. These ‘edges’ of our cities and towns are increasingly under pressure and we are set to lose more and more of nearby green space to developers. Enjoy it while we may.
Happy New Year!
