Green space in cities

Abstract

The urban landscape is a complex environment of built form: buildings, residential areas, shopping malls, streets and civic squares interspersed by the open space of parks, playgrounds, sportsfields and walkways.

The traditional philosophy underlying the development of the green open space in the city has been to provide residents with opportunities for recreation and leisure activities and to provide an element of nature within the urban context.

The resulting reality is often a sterile environment of closely mown turf and well tended flowerbeds that fill little more than a cosmetic role within an increasingly technological City.

The opportunity and indeed necessity exists however for a more meaningful and integrated relationship to development between urban form and the natural environment.

In considering the elements as naturally dependant within a single whole it is possible to create a self sustaining urban landscape in which greenspace can take on a number of ecologically and socially enriching roles.

With over 80% of the population of most industrialised nations now living in cities there is no more appropriate time to take a close look at the urban landscape and its relationship with the natural environment.

“Urban Green Space Planning would allow us to restore to the city a natural framework which would more readily satisfy the needs of people in the city whilst providing for those other inhabitants - the flora and fauna.”

The term “Green Space” is used to refer to the organic elements of the city that are living and breathing and as such is used in preference to the most familiar “open space” which can also incorporate those areas dominated by the hard landscape of roads and paving.

It is proposed in this dissertation to look at the subject of green space in cities in three parts.

Part One will place the subject within an industrial context and consider its evolution through time, particularly since the industrial revolution in Europe and America, and more recent developments in New Zealand.

Part Two outlines the diverse roles that green space in cities has the potential to fulfil and considers how these have developed in some contemporary examples.

Part Three focuses on the New Zealand situation and traces the case study of Hamilton exploring how the concepts raised in Part Two have been picked up and implemented within the local New Zealand context.