The think tank Policy Exchange has just published an excellent report on Britain’s urban green spaces called ‘Park Land’. The report’s author, Katherine Drayson, argues that we need to take better care of our parks and public gardens, particularly in the north-east, where local authority expenditure on open spaces has been cut by more than a third in the past two years.
‘Flourishing parks and green spaces are central to the success of our cities,’ argues Drayson. ‘Yet we’ve all gone for a walk in our local park only to find used needles, dog excrement and litter ruining our beautiful green spaces.’
Drayson’s solution is for the government to help set up a website that maps all of Britain’s urban green spaces. Not only would such a map help the public make better-informed decisions about the use of such spaces and whether or not they should be developed for housing, but it could become a resource for voluntary groups who want to organise clean-up operations. There is already an iPhone app called LoveCleanStreets that enables users to report graffiti and fly-tipping to their local councils, and this could be like that, except on a larger scale.
I’m all for anything that helps to make our cities cleaner places. Few things annoy me more than seeing litter and dog mess in London. A particular bugbear is when dog owners take the trouble to scoop up their animal’s mess and put it in a plastic bag, but then leave the bag on the pavement. That’s actually worse than doing nothing since it stops the excrement being washed away by the rain.
I fantasise about organising squads of vigilantes who will go around collecting these plastic bags and then forcing them through the letter boxes of negligent pet owners.
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