18 GAZEBO Publicparksand livingcities Urbanparkshavecomea longwayin the last ten years,buttheir futureis still far from secure, writes DavidLambert. When the Garden History Society and the Victorian Society wrote their Public Prospects: historic urban parks under threat in 1993, there was little sign of any interest from politicians local or national. The lobbying of groups like ours, like the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management and the GMB Union fell on deaf ears. Only Park Life: urban parks and social renewal (1995) by Comedia and Demos, seemed to garner any attention, partly because of it contained some statistical analysis (eight million visits a day; 40 per cent visiting at least twiceweekly) and partly because of the track record of the consultants on the whole theme of the public realm. The DETR followed it up by commissioning them to write its advisory publication People, Parks and Cities (1996) but that was out of print within eighteen months. What took over the baton was the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The one thing that none of us thought of asking for was £200 million in grant-aid. More than anything else, the cash put up by the Heritage Lottery Fund's Urban Parks Programme, launched in 1996, changed perceptions of the value of urban parks. It forced parks on to the heritage agenda. It also raised them up the wider agenda of urban renewal because of the way the HLF funded registered, nationally important parks and non-registered sites alike, because of the way it redefined 'heritage' spending to include new toilets, restaurants, glasshouses and redesigned garden areas, and because it tested applications not just against heritage criteria but also against social criteria. As a result of the HLF more than anything else, the importance of parks has been transformed from a plaintive cry in the wilderness to a political truism. Parks, we are told in the Urban White Paper, "are vital to enhancing the quality of urban environments and the quality of our lives". With that document at the end of 2000, the Government finally caught up with what the rest of us had known all along. The HLF contribution is enormous. But at the same time it is no more than a blip. On the one hand the scale of the funding is awesome: in comparison to the HLF's £30-50m per year, English Heritage for example was running a £200,000 Garden Grants Programme to cover all the private historic gardens in England. On the other, it has still barely begun to scratch the surface in terms of tackling decades of under-spending: even £30m per year will take a long time to redress the backlog of repairs now needed. It has been estimated by the Parks Assessment 2001 research that the total reduction in local authority spending on parks in the last twenty years totals around £1.3 billion. It is costing the HLF on average £1-1.5 million to restore each park it has funded. And there are estimated to be 5000 historic urban parks alone. A very simple calculation gives some idea of the scale of the problem, and the compound effect of neglecting maintenance on the need for major capital repairs. Invisible for many years, the chickens of annual budget cuts are now coming home to roost. As much as its impact on the individual parks so far grant-aided, the Lottery's investment has had incalculable knock-on effects: its cash-valuation forced politicians, local and national, to think of other kinds of value in good urban parks, such as their contribution to public health, social inclusion or local economies. Local authority leaders realised a vote-winner when they saw one, and the production of district and borough parks and open spaces strategies leapt forward. Recognition of the importance of non-registered parks and gardens to the local heritage and environment has been championed by the Garden History Society and the Association of Gardens Trusts. The momentum has developed with Best Value reviews and citizens panels, indicating how much voters feel parks and green spaces contribute to quality of life. It is also doubtful whether without the HLF programme parks would have caught the eye of the House of Commons Environment Select Committee, the damning report of whose 1999 inquiry into town and country parks (essential reading for anyone interested in parks) finally forced the government to sit up and take notice. The inquiry was a landmark in the history of urban parks: as Ken Worpole pointed out, it is the most sustained debate on the importance of parks in over a century at least. Words like "shocked" and "a wasted opportunity of tragic proportions" hammered home the message. Not all of the report's recommendations have been followed, but it has led to English Heritage reviewing the number (disproportionately low) of urban parks on the national Register, and to the Urban White Paper's belated but welcome recognition of the importance of parks. In the wake of the Urban White Paper, the government set up in January 2001 an Urban Parks and Green Space Taskforce which should report around the end of the year. This is not the public review many of us had called for, and its agenda remains firmly in the hands of civil servants and ministers, but we do now have a minister responsible (Sally Keeble), government -sponsored research, and a commitment to coming up with some answers by early next year. Any optimism about this welcome government inCONTEXT 72 DECEMBER 2001
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=