PROFILE
End Street North Park’s lessons for Africa
City officials globally are learning that residents’ quality of life is significantly affected by the quality of public open spaces available. A sociable, cohesive and healthy society requires well-managed and maintained public open spaces.
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ith 3 000 land parcels stretching from cemeteries to large road islands on its books, how does Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ) ensure the safety and upkeep of these parks and public open spaces with limited resources, budget and capacity to deal with the many challenges they face? While focusing on limited resources to developing and managing accessible, inclusive and sustainable public open spaces. JCPZ found that lack of security and other concerns kept people away from local parks. End Street North Park in Doornfontein was selected as the most challenged site of a 2019 pilot project to make parks safe and attractive by testing alternative development and management concepts. The approach aimed to be holistic and collaborative, involving not only the local users and stakeholders, but also City departments. The overall ambitious aim was to develop a practical and integrated model to design and manage public open spaces that could be mimicked elsewhere in Joburg, and throughout cities in Africa. Taken from the report Transforming Public Parks into Safe and Inclusive Community Spaces: Lessons on collaboration and participation from the City of Johannesburg, here are seven lessons learnt for park users and administrators throughout Africa. 1. More than just green spaces, parks knit neighbourhoods’ social fabric Parks are more than simply physical spaces for relaxing and playing and require more input than the simple municipal services of picking up litter and cutting grass. A holistic understanding of managing public open spaces and parks is required for them to fulfil functions that best benefit the communities that use them, especially in dense and diverse neighbourhoods.
2. Partnerships and collective action are key to any park’s success The ongoing process of activating and managing parks needs partnerships, networks and forums to germinate and take root. Adding capacity and knowledge-sharing to the park through the commitment of invested individuals with a common purpose make the adage ‘many hands make light work’ a reality. The End Street North Park project was made possible through a joint partnership between Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ), as project leader, the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA), the Department of Public Safety, Sticky Situations, Wits University and the Inclusive Violence and Crime Prevention Programme (VCP), a joint development cooperation programme between South Africa and Germany implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and UNHabitat Global Public Space Programme . The process created the space for new collaborations to emerge, not only across City departments but with the South African Cities Network and the South African Local Government Association. 3. Park users are not all the same Park users reflect the demographics of the neighbourhood plus school children and visitors. Therefore, a requirement to develop inclusive, safe and accessible parks is an understanding of the needs, desires and challenges of all different park users. Importantly, the roles of vulnerable groups such as people experiencing homelessness, waste collectors, informal traders provide by being the eyes and ears of the park, and as such contribute to safety and security. The needs of most park users can be accommodated through communication, education and negotiation about the role and contribution of the shared space to the general community, including how and when it is used.
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POSITIVE IMPACT ISSUE 11
