Urban Parkland: Protecting Intangible Commodities

Everyone knows that parks are important for a happy city, with many thriving cities distinguished according to the proportions of their greenspace.  Urban parks are therefore well protected, rarely compromised by any public or private development interests. Most citizens take the protection of parks for granted, seldom allowing for any other interest that might claim the parkland for another use.

But, a proposed development might have great promise for the community, even when it alters or destroys an established and beloved park. How can we quantify the benefits of the existing park, in order to intelligently approve or deny its development for the sake of some other good?

A reliable system may or may not exist for measuring a park's product. This discussion, meanwhile, will merely identify an interesting cross-section of that product, emphasizing some of the less tangible, less measurable assets which a park offers to the community.

1) Aesthetic forms
In less-developed parkspace, we are brought home to organic forms. They curl around and soften those right angles which are always gathering on our retinas in the city.

We need to be reminded of this space outside of order, even if it makes us ecstatic, and especially if it frightens us.

2) Escapism
Parks also appeal to our need for a place that's removed from the matrix of our everyday environments: the household; the marketplace; the place of employment; the state.

It is not the vegetable Laws which alienate us from our desires, and frustrate our designs at happiness. In the forest, pleasure means picking huckleberries, hiding behind trees, and being startled by sudden mushrooms. Experience is simplified,  not adulterated by doubts and distractions.

3) Room to see
For other people, it's the space that makes parkland so valuable. Open space offers not only a bigger stretch of ground for running, or for playing catch, or walking the dog, but it also relaxes our eyes. We were born into a wide world, with vision designed for seeing great distances. The shape of our eyes' lenses adjusts to see objects farther or closer to us.

The world of hallways, bathrooms and screens will atrophy our eyesight. This is not a metaphor. (When our eyes get claustrophobia, they clasp the brain's knees and won't let go.)

4) Truth
Many of our developed spaces reinforce a psychology of mastery, industry, and discontent. There are storm drains, stoplights, opportunities galore, and everywhere the self-conscious smiles of advertisements.

The natural world is more honest. Ivy will strangle a tree without pretending to apologize. The footpath widens around a puddle because there is nobody mandated to order that a bridge should be built. Nature's trains don't run on time, so nobody else is expeced to, either.

Parks Vs. Development in Nanaimo - Public Forums

Felling trees at Colliery Dams Park for a watermain
Cable Bay Golf Resort & Spa - compromising parkland

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