Stewardship in the city

By Rhea Martin

Rhea Martin is Open City’s programmes and communities manager, and leader of the Open City Stewardship Awards, a new awards programme recognising holistic longterm care of the urban environment.

Open City is a charity dedicated to making London more open, accessible and equitable. In partnership with Construction Declares, Open City has launched a new programme recognising industry leaders in ongoing, long-term, strategic urban care: The Open City Stewardship Awards.

Over the past year, we have relied more than ever on our cities’ green spaces – a treasured respite from the enduring monotony of the great indoors. Local parks have hosted celebrations, commiserations, and moments of togetherness and solitude alike. That so many of us live without access to an outdoor space of our own has raised timely questions about the role of open spaces in our communities, their critical function in everyday life, the types of people they serve, and crucially, the types of people that serve them.

As I am writing this in late April, I have crossed the road from my flat to sit on a shaded bench. The Parks and Outdoor Spaces team has come to take care of it, and I am surrounded by the smell of freshly cut grass, a small act of care that feels important to focus on as we adjust to yet another change of pace. Many conversations about the change we are yet to see seem to deal in absolutes – everyone will continue to work from home, the face of the high street will be unrecognisable, and parts of the city like Canary Wharf are ‘over.’ Our cities’ open spaces are not just places of leisure, they are often home to vital pieces of industry and infrastructure, play a vital role in mitigating drainage and heat retention, and must respond to the messy complexity of urban life. In the face of interrelated climate, ecological and societal challenges, awe should look past prophecies of sweeping and dramatic change and instead embrace incrementalism, maintenance and care as our tools.

As landscape architect Johanna Gibbons, co-founder of J&L Gibbons and one of the judges for the new Open City Stewardship Awards, puts it: “Stewardship is about having a long- term vision and dedicated resources to work towards it. In understanding the inevitable dynamics of change, we can implement caretaking that is responsive, inclusive and innovative, nurturing urban habitats in which we cannot just survive, but thrive.” In other words, our knowledge and understanding are always provisional, and subject to adjustment over time. My own understanding of stewardship has tended to lean towards the traditional, be it the preservation of a historic estate, forest or swathe of agricultural land, but it is vital to the success of our urban environments as well. We see failures in an inflexible approach when promised public spaces do not remain truly open to the public, or when new buildings cannot be adequately maintained by their users; the Stewardship Awards aim to dig beneath the gloss of a newly completed scheme.

The work that underpins the process of stewardship is not glamorous, and by its nature is less prominent than a new structure, gleamingly hewn – but just as the pandemic has revealed that key workers are not only those working in hospitals, the time has come to celebrate the unsung heroes of our built environment. For the team at Open City, the launch of the Stewardship Awards is not just about announcing a winner, but a statement of intent that will inform our work over the coming months. In the lead up to the awards ceremony in 2022, a public programme including a strand of the annual Open House Festival will explore the different forms that stewardship can take. From care of open spaces and communities to the management of estates and material supply chains, to achieve the goal of a truly open city we must first demonstrate a commitment to a perpetual process of learning and adjustment guiding each of our decisions.

Find out more about the Open House Festival on the 4 and 5 September on our website: open-city.org.uk/ stewardship-awards