Parks Beyond Boundaries conference reminded 'parks are for people'

Urban parks should focus on providing amenities for people, not just environments for wildlife, according to a keynote speaker at this week's fifth International Parks Management and Leadership Conference.

Speaking at the 'Parks Beyond Boundaries' Conference, being held at the National Wine Centre, Adelaide from 22nd to 24th May, Enrique Penalosa, the former Mayor of Bogota, Columbia and a world leader in sustainable urban planning, explained his belief that city planners should focus on catering for urban populations.

While Mayor of Bogota, Penalosa (pictured) restricted car use in his city and set up child-friendly public spaces, including hundreds of kilometres of bicycle paths and 'greenways'.

Explaining his presentation to Adelaide Now, Penalosa stated "the new Australian city that I would dream of could have fantastic green spaces, which are much more used and much more fun than the boring yards that you have in the suburbs.

"Very few people use backyards at all ... even when they have a barbecue they put the barbecue next to the house because they don't have to walk across the garden, going back and forth."

Penalosa highlighted that low density suburbs were designed for cars, not people, that 'handicapped' childreb and made them reliant on the family car.

Penalosa added "we have an inkling that what we have as human habitat now is wrong, it's very wrong. We do not yet know exactly what it is that we want but we know what we have, we don't like.

"The way to measure if a park is good, or better, is how much does it attract and retain people? Parks are for people; we're not creating forests for monkeys, or koalas or kangaroos ... we are talking about urban parks and the whole design should be around what will attract and retain the most people."

Cartoonist and social commentator Michael Leunig, who also spoke at the conference, said that he had often wondered why it is one park can be "so used and loved, held dear by people, and other parks are not, they're more vacant and almost haunted - it's as if people are afraid of them.

"Central Park in New York is a famously used people's park. It's very effective and of course it's gigantic, but the little parks are incredibly important also.

"These contemplation spaces, like breathing spaces for the mind, are places where people can sit and see a tree or lie on the grass ... You can't go building apartments without parks."

The conference has attracted parks leaders from Australia, New Zealand and beyond to discuss issues affecting parks management as we look towards the future.

Organisers explain that "as we look to the future, it becomes clearer that a sustainable natural environment must become an issue not only for those with the stewardship responsibilities for our parks, but the wider community beyond those park boundaries as well.

"Our emerging understanding of the need to look beyond our boundaries is currently being expressed through a number of initiatives such as joint management of parks and lands, landscape scale/connectivity conservation, and a raft of new approaches to engagement with the community, the private sector the NGO - non government agencies - sector and other stakeholders."

Parks Forum is the peak body for park management organisations, with members across Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Canada and the USA. 

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