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This chapter looks at interventions for land and open spaces and their impact on public health and safety. Abandoned, vacant, and neglected land is of great and growing concern in many cities. The chapter considers recent efforts to address this sort of land-based blight and how planners can partner with scientists to implement and evaluate land-remediation and zoning strategies to best improve public health and safety. In many ways, these changes represent the innate human desire for nature and green spaces. Without action from planners and landscape architects, such natural spaces would not exist in many of the cities. The chapter then showcases several studies that provide evidence that the mere presence of green spaces have healing and calming effects, an effect that occurs even if residents do not actively use these spaces. Indeed, there have been myriad efforts over the past decade or so by cities to revisit and reinvigorate their green and open-space planning efforts. Much of this effort has been to insert managed green spaces into smaller parcels and equitably distribute them across neighborhoods that lack access to larger green spaces. This pocket-park movement has economic drivers but, in some cities, also seeks to leverage the likely health benefits to local residents.

Urban green spaces contribute to the environmental and economic health of cities and human health and well-being. The challenge for cities is how and where to increase natural areas with limited usable land, high development costs, low maintenance budgets, and stakeholder conflicts. New approaches to nature-in-cities is cities-in-nature include cities in urban biosphere reserves and national park cities that encourage a regional view of sustainable development. Strategies for partnerships and project funding include making projects part of resilient city plans and showing multi-purpose, multi-cultural, city-wide impact. New ideas to increase green spaces include installing temporary mobile green spaces, building tiny parklets that provide green dots throughout the city, and repurposing old transportation corridors, such as the High Line Park in New York City, and other industrial sites for city parks and recreation.

Situated mainly in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood, this chapter examines “green gentrification”—the correlation between environmental improvements and high-end real estate development. Taking an historic look at urban parks and property values, this chapter begins with nineteenth-century discourses about nature, social uplift, and morality. The symbolic value attached to green space soon correlated with material value, as parks boosted nearby property values. Despite their public status, parks became spaces of subtle racial and class-based exclusion. As sustainability gained popularity in the early 2000s and the real estate market boomed, new green spaces became an amenity that drew affluent residents to gentrifying areas. Environmental justice activists in these neighborhoods thus found that the very improvements for which they had been fighting now facilitated gentrification and threatened to displace low-income residents and communities of color.

This chapter examines the political ecologies of wildlife conservation in London. The concerns with setting aside places for nature in the city are being supplanted by a desire to integrate ecological forms and processes as components of a connected urban ‘green infrastructure’. This includes novel forms of ecological engineering such as living walls and roofs, alongside the creation of ‘green grids’. There has also been a growing appreciation of the physical and mental health benefits of urban green space for citizens. However, the public discourse of social and ecological reconnection must be reconciled with changes in urban ecological governance. These include a decline in public control over planning and spending on restoration, and growing enthusiasm for both voluntary citizenship and public-private partnership.

Urban life in Cairo manages to articulate its own local responses. If some green spaces dot the landscape of the city and its suburban area, it is the not-peripheral (and quite green) zoo that the popular classes adore, especially during holidays. The popular passion for the zoo and the way it is used today were not defined in the original vision for this park. The Zoological Garden was conceived within the same paradigm as the other gardens of the downtown area. This chapter discusses certain public spaces in Cairo that respond to the imperatives of spatial openness and accessibility, particularly the Giza zoo, with some comparison with the popularly claimed areas of wust al-balad, Cairo's central business district. Both spaces are very much frequented by the popular classes according to specific rhythms. These public spaces are where one goes to amuse oneself in a liberated, disinterested, and hedonistic way.

This chapter examines how Glasgow City Council (hereafter, GCC) has chosen to meet its environmental challenges and how these efforts are increasingly linked to other aspects of city governance (from the resilience agenda to regional partnerships). With a focus on natural habitats, green space and climate change related risks this chapter outlines and critiques the city’s environmental achievements since 2010 and its current environment-related policies, projects and partnerships. It explores the development and progression of local sustainability and greening agendas such as how they evolved during the city-wide Sustainability Strategy (PMG, 2019) and through Glasgow’s participation in the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities programme (100RC). Glasgow’s initiatives are contextualised within wider regional initiatives (e.g. Clyde region) and devolved national (e.g. Scottish Government) policy. We critically evaluate the range of multi-level governance actors that are helping shape environmental sustainability and resilience initiatives within Glasgow and conclude by reflecting on where Glasgow’s sustainability efforts are bearing fruit and what may help the city achieve its sustainability and resilience goals more fully.

This chapter examines visions of a green Tokyo that were stirred by the earthquake and fires of September 1923 through the American occupation of 1945–1952. It considers two visionary designs developed by planners in the Home Ministry and Tokyo prefectural government for the future metropolitan landscape, both of which incorporated public parks and other open spaces. Before discussing the impact of each vision on city planning in the postwar period, this chapter provides a background on the Kanto disaster that struck Tokyo on September 1, 1923. It explores how the disaster presented the opportunity to redefine public space in the capital region. It then considers the influx of private land donations for public use throughout the metropolitan region in the wake of the Kanto earthquake and fires, along with the Home Ministry's role in the establishment of a large number of city parks in the 1930s. It also describes the proposed green space plan for Tokyo, the postwar metamorphosis of green spaces into city parks, and the rebuilding of city parks from 1945 to 1955.

Part two compares two visions of postwar democratic public life, both expressed through green space: a reformist bourgeois ideal, and a more radical proletarian one. Chapter 3 presents the bourgeois vision as it was realized in the 1970s through a series of large regional parks (Revierparks), in the Ruhr. The chapter examines social scientific literature, planning documents, and promotional materials to show how the parks’ social functions and benefits were perceived. It argues that, as planners rejected the insularity and homogeneity of community as a social form after National Socialism, they understood the parks to be important tools for rebuilding democratic public life, and specifically saw them as sites for the creation of a Habermasian public sphere as part of a new model of urbanism based on a spatial division of functions and a pluralistic leisure society. The chapter also introduces a new aspect of nature’s perceived universality. Planners’ inclusion of the Ruhr’s blue-collar workforce in postwar society through the parks highlights how the spatiotemporal and phenomenological qualities of green space—physically pleasant, separated from work and home—make it easy to experience such spaces as both desirable and socially neutral, and make them useful settings for democracy.

This chapter explores the efforts of activists, architects, middle-class residents, as well as municipal officers of Jakarta to provide more open green spaces for the city. In particular, it discusses the “Clean and Green Jakarta” campaign, which aimed to plant a thousand trees in Jakarta's largest and most biodiverse green area. The project was powered by 300 volunteers and supported by citizen and business groups such as: Jakarta Green Radio the daily Bisnis Indonesia, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Hence, the campaign could be seen as an example of governmentality in postauthoritarian Indonesia, which implicates the desires of both citizen groups and the state (in the figure of the city governor) for a transformation of Jakarta.

This chapter highlights the effect of the overall social environment on health, showing how poverty in a high-inequality society (such as the US) is spatially associated with factors that make healthy living more difficult: a lack of quality food outlets and green spaces. It focuses on the built and social residential environment of individuals, with the implicit understanding that there are myriad factors on biological and social levels that contribute towards obesity and its related consequences. The chapter also stresses how the residential environment of individuals can frame their health-related behaviours related to obesity, specifically diet and physical activity. It uses the example of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to examine the distribution of obesity within the city in relation to the green space environment, the distribution of food purchasing venues and the sociodemographic characteristics of neighbourhoods within the city.

This chapter examines urban and natural parks during the era of sustained economic growth from the 1950s through the 1980s. A number of interrelated events sparked public demand for both national and city parks in Japan from the end of the occupation in 1952 until the economic slowdown of the early 1990s. Environmental concerns expressed by neighborhood groups beginning in the mid-1960s added to the clamor for more green spaces in the cities, resulting in the expansion of urban parks between 1960 and 1990. This chapter first considers how public spaces were conceived as a way to stimulate positive attitudes as Japan was grappling with the meaning of postwar democracy. It then discusses the City Parks Law of 1956 and how it provided the impetus for planning open spaces in the capital region. It also describes the creation of more city and national parks at a time when Japan was enjoying high-speed growth, along with the issue of environmental protection regarding city park planning. The chapter concludes with an assessment of urban green spaces during the affluent 1970s and 1980s.

Environmental justice has become a major urban issue in the last 50 years or so. With increased awareness of the detrimental impact that environmental degradation can have on humans, social movements led by environmentally conscious activists developed to demand government action. Environmental justice can be considered from both an amenity and a hazard perspective; the result is uniformly the same: where there is inequity, poorer and ethno-racial minority neighborhoods have less access to environmental amenities and are exposed to more environmental hazards, while affluent neighborhoods have more access to environmental amenities and are not exposed to environmental hazards. Most sustainable cities try to offer equitable access to environmental amenities, such as green open spaces, to all citizens; however, brownfields and other environmental hazards are still present in most urban areas.

One of the most pressing policy concerns in the world is the health of the environment, and the problems for the environment caused by economic development and population growth. We describe four specific policy areas that might be enlightened by referring to well-being measures: the impact of aircraft noise, the effects of air pollution, problems arising in conjunction with commuting, and the influence of parks and green spaces on well-being. In each of these instances, existing well-being data indicate that the subjective well-being of people is influenced by environmental conditions, and measures of well-being are one method by which interventions to correct environmental problems can be assessed. Furthermore, well-being measures can help suggest which of various interventions might be most effective in ameliorating the problems. It is emphasized that the existing well-being data are often not sufficient for fully informing policy discussions. Rather, the potential for adequate data, when it becomes available, to inform policy is emphasized.

Urban plants are both cultivated and naturally established vegetation in cities that provide biodiversity, host wildlife, and provide ecosystem services, such as clean air, temperature moderation, and carbon sequestration. Social and cultural benefits include natural beauty and enhanced liveability of cities. Urban vegetation includes native and non-native species found in public and private green spaces, such as parks and residential yards. Challenges to growing vegetation in urban areas include poor soil quality, soil compaction, lack of water, temperature extremes, and the use of chemical treatment for pests and weeds. New trends are emerging to improve environmental health, such as using green walls and roofs, valuing weeds as desired urban plants, the rising use of native plants, and new algorithm models to map trees and vegetation with satellite imagery and radar.

This chapter examines new eco-regimes of volunteerism and ecological consciousness in both city and natural parks during the 1990s and early twenty-first century. During the 1990s and early 2000s, civic-minded Japanese increasingly engaged with ecological issues in general and open space planning in particular, in both city and natural parks. Since World War II, Japanese leaders have devoted enormous resources to bringing green spaces to their cities but relatively fewer to protecting the nation's seemingly abundant countryside environment. This chapter first considers the issue of wildlife protection that affected natural parks and other preserves in the early 2000s, along with the international recognition received by Japanese national parks and other landscapes as World Heritage sites and Ramsar Convention wetlands. It also discusses the emergence of a new forest culture aimed at attracting visitors to the recreation areas within national forests; the emergence of eco-regimes that sought to restore rural interfaces between farms and forests; and the ecotourism spawned by natural parks and national forests.

This chapter describes how workers used rural and wild landscapes as well as urban green spaces to forge community and to make a working class. These laborers typically used these spaces to imagine a reformed and sometimes utopian future, thereby adding a “green” dimension to Chicago’s labor movement during the early twentieth century. Trade unionists often held demonstrations along Ogden’s Grove, a popular place used by trade unionists to organize meetings and voice out concerns regarding labor conditions. Labor leaders spoke of a reformed society, a future world which workers would have eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours to do “what we will.” These meetings eventually became large-scale demonstrations that conducted parades along the city and is usually ended with a picnic at various parks. Unionists view the picnic as an opportunity for workers to bridge ethnic and craft divisions.

This chapter analyzes how the immigrant youth living in Chicago during the early twentieth century in America utilized the green spaces of the city for the purposes of leisure and recreation by exploring James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy of novels. It highlights Studs and his friends’ adventures at Washington Park that serves as a green escape from urban struggles. For Patrick, the father of Studs, the park also served as a “homeland” as it reminds immigrants of their native natural landscapes. Studs, in contrast, returns to the park to reminisce on his romantic encounter with Lucy Scanlon, his first love. Farrell’s trilogy portrays the world of Irish ethnic youth in detail. The places and historical events are all real, and many of the characters are based on real people Farrell knew intimately. The novels show how throughout Chicago, city-born ethnic youth sought out green space and made them their “turf.”

This chapter explores the formation of a “Black Metropolis” within Chicago by African Americans, who against the backdrop of racism wanted a land of their own. They used this metropolis to remember African soil and imagine themselves as a community. The chapter describes the Black Belt, a narrow strip where black professionals lived. Like their white neighbors in Back of the Yards, poor African Americans had to contend with unpleasant and dangerous environmental situations. Leisure afforded some escape from work, and like other foreigners, most African Americans enjoyed their leisure indoors. At the same time, many blacks also found refuge in green spaces such as parks. However, due to race restrictions they were prohibited from visiting these places. The chapter examines how through the 1919 Chicago race riots, African Americans secured greater control of urban, rural, and wild green spaces where they could temporarily retreat from urban life.

This book examines the history of public parks and green spaces in Japan and its colonies. It considers the ways in which public parks—both national and urban—have figured in state formation, modern culture and national distinctiveness, military mobilization and disaster prevention, and public assembly during Japan's experience of spatial and ecological modernity since 1868. It explores how urban and mountain spaces were transformed into public parklands reminiscent of state practices in Europe and America, and how such models continued to influence park development in Japan from the 1870s to the twenty-first century, but without necessarily embracing Western teleological rationales. It also explains how urban and national parks have been envisioned to advance the central government's project of social unification. By analyzing urban and national parks together, the book shows how Japan's experience of spatial modernity challenges current thinking about protection and use of the nonhuman environment worldwide.