Citizen initiatives can contribute to a transition in governance and enhance the quality of urban greenspaceThis article presents a case study of events and outcomes relating to a citizens’ initiative in urban greenspace design. Using "transition theory," the article also investigates how municipal management and development of urban greenspace can become more reflective of citizen’s ideas and relationships with nature, which tend to differ from the institutionalized knowledge of the local municipality.
The case study focuses on the work of two sisters involved in the Diepenheim Inside-Out Forest in the Netherlands. The site was, at one time, a tarmacked roller skate area. In 2007, the municipality issued a call for proposals to redevelop this site which was situated in front of a primary school. The winning proposal reflected the “usual practice” of installing a number of playsets. An alternative proposal developed by local children called for a more natural playspace. The municipality dismissed the children’s proposal and referred to it as being “not possible.” Two mothers, who were sisters and had grown up interacting with nature, decided to elaborate on the children’s proposal. They presented their ideas to the director of the primary school who, after realizing that the winning proposal would simply duplicate what the school already offered as a playspace, decided to support the sisters’ initiative. The municipality allowed the sisters to go forward with their project and gave them more responsibility in implementing their plans than they had anticipated. The sisters – along with others in the community (including school children) – developed a natural playspace, which they referred to as the Inside-Out Forest.
The researchers conducted eight semi-structured interviews with the initiators and others involved with the project to get their perspectives on urban greenspace, its management, development, use, and meaning. The interviews were also used to collect information about how the municipality changed in relation to this one case, how such transition takes place, the role of the networks, and the barriers.
This study illustrates how the different benefits that arise in a greenspace development and management initiative relate to the “critical knowledge” and “situated knowledge” of the actors involved. Critical knowledge carries the cultural values of members of the local community; situated knowledge refers to the local site and its uses. Both critical knowledge and situated knowledge exist at the level of parties initiating the land use innovations. In this case, such knowledge did not exist at the level of the "regime" – that is, in the deep structure of the society operating on a semi-coherent set of rules and routine practices. The criteria and values framing the development of the Inside-Out-Forest differed from those routine practices. Overtime, however, through a sharing of knowledge and resources between the regime and the project initiators, a new way of developing urban greenspace emerged. The process has implications for other urban greenspace development initiatives.
While municipalities acting alone tend to develop a type of urban greenspace that is rather uniform in its shape and use, engaging the voices and resources of other interested parties can lead to a different type or quality of greenspace, which likely includes more opportunities to engage with nature.
The Bottom Line