After a year of being hefted to at best a short walk
from our homes we have all come to realize that green spaces are key to our
health and wellbeing.
In what acting mayor Councillor Wendy Simon described
to the media as ‘a ground-breaking, forward-looking approach to protecting our
green spaces’ Liverpool City Council have joined in partnership with Fields in
Trust to preserve the city’s parks and green spaces for future generations.
Earlier this month the council cabinet voted to
support a motion that will protect 100 green spaces, equivalent to 1000
hectares of land from development in perpetuity. This will initially apply to
20 sites in areas deemed in most need of having their green spaces protected
due to deprivation and will then be extended across the city.
Acting Mayor Wendy Simon said in a press statement
‘Liverpool is blessed to have so many stunning green spaces, and this new
initiative means we can ensure everyone has access to free, local, outdoor
spaces for sport, play and recreation forever’.
In a city like Liverpool access to green spaces is
linked to public health, residents have access to 25.3 square meters per
individual, which is lower than the national average. In addition, 16% of
residents have no access to a private garden compared to a national average of
12%. Previously only 4 hectares of the city’s parks were protected from
development, now sites in all 30 wards will be protected, massively improving
access. This is particularly important as the city’s population is predicted to
grow by 10.3% over the next twenty years.
Liverpool, like many other cities in the North has
been hit hard by the pandemic with infection rates higher than the national
average and rising levels of reported stress and anxiety among residents
corresponding to lockdown measures.
Mayor Simon said about the city’s parks that the
‘health and wellbeing benefits these locations deliver are priceless’, adding
that ‘access to green spaces improves our neighborhoods, tackles climate change
and supports economic growth’.
Speaking about the decision made by Liverpool Council
Fields in Trust chair of trustees Jo Barnett said the city had made a
‘pioneering commitment’ to protect parks that are ‘valuable places where we can
move, breathe, run and play’, adding that in a national context ‘we need to
champion and support these precious spaces by protecting them for future
generations to enjoy’.
The pandemic had, she said, caused us to realize ‘how
valuable parks and green spaces are to our health and wellbeing, yet across the
UK only 6% are protected from development and access to them is not always
equitable’.
Hyperbole is the currency of press statements,
particularly those emanating from local government, even the most timidly
mundane decision ends up being recase at a great leap forwards when it passes
through the press department. What Liverpool council has done is genuinely
pioneering, meaning it involved thinking further ahead than the current
political cycle.
Parks are hugely important component parts of the modern
city, not just because trees are nicer to look at than concrete, though they
unquestionably are. They provide corridors for nature squeezed by urban sprawl
and help to clear the air of pollution; more importantly they make available to
everyone, regardless of income or community, a little of the tranquility and
leisure the wealthy have always taken for granted. In an ever more divided and
fractious society where the fissures between classes are likely only to grow
wider, that alone should make them a vital national resource.
Yet even though there is probably one on most of our
doorsteps they are something we tend to ignore. This is something that struck
me when I read Powering Up Stoke-on-Trent the glossy ‘brochure’ put out
by the council in my hometown describing how we are going to leapfrog over our
current troubles into a brave new world of productivity and prosperity.
It is packed full of infographics and photographs of
young people operating bits of technology as council leaders and businesspeople
look on approvingly mixed in with soft focus shots of the luxury hotel that was
set to open in the city centre before the world slammed on the brakes. On one
level it is a welcome change to see the council planning for a future where the
phrase ‘managed decline’ has been cut from the lexicon, on another though you
feel inclined to call for a large pinch of salt as you start reading. Similarly,
optimistic plans have been put forward before, only to run into the sand sooner
rather than later.
To be fair Powering Up Stoke-on-Trent sets out
its case in a commendably even-handed way. Drawing attention to how, pre
pandemic, the city had one of the fastest growing economies in the West
Midlands with wage levels going up by 11.7% between 2015/18 and 8000 new jobs
being created over the same period. At the same time, it does not shy away from
the city’s problems, these include a higher-than-average number of people aged
16-64 who are economically inactive (29% of the population compared to a
national average of 21.5%) and historically low levels of educational
attainment, only 22% of local workers have qualifications above NVQ Level 4.
The ‘brochure’ offers a set of proposals for
addressing the social and economic problems the city faces. These range from
the grandly ambitious, creating a ‘silicon Stoke’ primed to tap into the green
industrial revolution; to the resolutely practical, including improving the
city’s notoriously poor transport system. Other plans have about them the dead
hand of government targets and things that are ‘done’ to communities for their
own good, including setting up a Health and Work scheme to tackle long term
health related unemployment and making Stoke a Mental Health City, which seems
to be a euphemism for yet another ‘integration’ of services.
All this is, no doubt, necessary; but unless you are
going to be sipping cocktails in the Holiday Inn in some brighter future just
around the corner, it all sounds a bit grim.
Surprisingly since the city council lists 87 sites
officially designated as parks on its website the brochure does not mention any
of them. More to the point it ignores their social utility, although it does
list 14% of the local population being treated by their GP for anxiety or
depression amongst the city’s health challenges.
Green spaces are inextricably linked to our wellbeing,
the more access we have to them we have, the better we feel. Simples; as those
annoying Russian meerkats say, so why can’ Stoke-on-Trent council seem to see
it?
Perhaps its that parks are always there, the place
just at the end of the street where we used to ride our bikes when we were
kids, where we moped about as teenagers and probably where we will do so again
as pensioners if we are spared. They are something we take for granted and as
such we are always at risk of losing.
Where you or I might see a patch of green soaked in
memories and associations a developer sees the perfect plot to build
‘executive’ homes, a council squeezed for funds before the pandemic and all but
broke now might see a pot of gold. Resisting the imperative to know the price
of everything and the value of nothing is what makes the decision taken by
Liverpool council genuinely ‘pioneering’.
If they want their plans to ‘power up’ the city for a
future that cannot stay on hold forever, then Stoke-on-Trent City Council must
do the same.
