In the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York, parks are the “lungs” or the “soul of the city”. They give city dwellers room to breathe—literally and figuratively—and in theory they are open to all and free of charge. Defending them is essential, especially in metropolises where there isn’t much green space.
In practice, however, as public services retrench so too has investment in green spaces. Across the country, park upkeep is increasingly reliant on voluntary groups and litter-pickers. Green spaces have become commodities, and are often closed off to the public in England’s cities. In Heaton Park in Manchester, for instance, Halloween-themed events blocked public access to part of the site for 13 days in October.
Further south, every summer much of Finsbury Park in north London is fenced off for music festivals organised by private companies who pay the local council a fee to use the space. The Friends of Finsbury Park group is increasingly opposed to what Katrina Navickas at the University of Hertfordshire describes as “enclosures by privatisation”. While the Friends aren’t completely against the idea of commercial events taking place, it is their scale, with parts of the site closed off for weeks, that is contrary to the park’s founding purpose, they argue. As set out in legislation, the group observes, Finsbury Park is held in trust for the public by Haringey Council. Not only are these large-scale festivals often described as disruptive to local residents, leaving traffic, noise pollution and litter in their wake, but the Friends are concerned that Haringey is now reliant on the income of more, and ever-larger, commercial events.
A more egregious case involves neighbouring Enfield Council and the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. In 2023, 788 objections were made against Enfield’s proposal to lease 60 per cent of Whitewebbs Park, which the council says it has had problems maintaining, to Tottenham for 25 years. Under the club’s plans, 33 per cent of the leased site would be off-limits to the public and Tottenham would invest in improvements to footpaths and bridleways to mitigate the impact. A petition last year against the plan going ahead secured more than 5,000 signatures. Enfield itself estimates that the agreement could only save it £140,000 per year—equivalent to 0.04 per cent of its £319m annual budget.
In February 2024 the High Court heard the case for a judicial review against the council’s decision, following a crowd-funded legal challenge launched by Sean Wilkinson, chair of the Friends of Whitewebbs Park group. In May, the judge rejected the grounds for Wilkinson’s case in a written verdict. His lawyers requested an appeal, but this was rejected in October. According to the High Court, Enfield’s decision to lease the green space was entirely legal and proper. There is limited recourse available to the public to stop it, despite the sizeable opposition to the decision.
However good the intentions may be behind a particular project, commercialisation does shape the experience of using green spaces—and not always in a positive way. Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester (not strictly speaking green) is another example of this phenomenon. Described by the National Trust as a “Victorian-era steel viaduct transformed into a green ‘sky garden’”, the site is very popular with locals. Yet it is only freely accessible to the public for two years and is only open part-time. Meanwhile, it is “seeking investors” to “secure the viaduct’s future” beyond the initial two years. But what happens then will depend on the terms agreed with investors. This may or may not turn out to be in the interests of the public.
Too much commercial activity can alter public spaces from being sites of what Italians call passeggiata—to stroll leisurely, or to socialise—and instead of consumption. And in such sites, the most disadvantaged in our communities, such as rough sleepers, are not welcome. The sociologist Kevin Loughran charts how the privatisation of green spaces in the United States—some of which are owned by private corporations—has been accompanied by their “securitisation”. Green spaces have increasingly become “panopticons”, he argues, drawing on the work of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (whose skeleton, on public display at University College London, is ironically more accessible to the public than some green spaces in the capital).
A panopticon is a space designed in such a way that its users are subject to surveillance at any time. Users do not know when that’s the case, and therefore they regulate their behaviour on the assumption that they are constantly being watched. It is a system of control. CCTV, gated green spaces and Public Space Protection Orders (PSPO)—some of which accompany commercialisation—can penalise a broad range of behaviours. Under a three-year PSPO introduced by North East Derbyshire council in 2015, for instance, activities banned “on the open, park areas” of Mickley included “playing golf or being in possession of golf equipment”.
Green spaces provide a wealth of well-being and social benefits, and therefore the accessibility of parks to the public is key to reducing inequalities. Research by the New Economics Foundation has revealed that neighbourhoods with housing built since 2009 have as much as 40 per cent less green space than neighbourhoods with Victorian properties, and the most disadvantaged areas are less likely to have access to green spaces. In the 2021 London Plan, the the city’s mayor warned against development that will “result in the loss of protected open space”. The plan also recommended the maximum distances Londoners should have to travel to green spaces as being at most 400 metres. For many of us this is far from being the reality.
Local authorities are under the kosh and their financial situation will not improve in the short-term—but parks are not councils’ equivalent of a golden goose. Leasing, disowning or commercialising green spaces is a false economy.
This article has been updated to remove a line mistakenly stating that Susan Erbil and Enfield's council leader are married. They are related, but not married. We apologise for the error
