Home  Monthly Issue Green Places Open Spaces
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Tuesday, 13 October 2009 |
Green places open spaces, an initiative of the Willie Redhead Foundation that is supported by the Global Environment Facility of the UN, seeks to promote a range of activities toward enhancing eco-friendliness in and around the city of St. George’s. The idea of “green places” for its part highlights conservation of vegetation, greenness, the natural environment and general values for greenness as an integral dimension of the urban environment. The idea of “open spaces” on the other hand highlights the need for free spaces as an essential part of human health and well-being and involving issues of access to and use of open spaces for free movement.
Over the years the Willie Redhead Foundation has been well–known for its emphasis on historicity and heritage with respect to the town of St. George’s and with special emphasis on built or fabricated structures. The watchwords are preservation and renewal of the national heritage in response to a serious lack of appreciation, at times, for conservation of existing historical valuables in the face of inevitable and inexorable urban development. Even as preservation is highlighted and historicity and heritage would speak of the past, the Willie Redhead Foundation in its current orientation seeks to be conservationist rather that preservationist. As such, sustainability and continuance of the historical character of the built environment is being promoted as an issue of restoration for buildings that might be failing or might be designated for “change–of-use”. By the same token the Willie Redhead Foundation promotes the design of newly created structures that conserve historicity and heritage within the city, as means toward compensation for unavoidable loss of disused buildings that may be considered as not worth restoring because of powerful economic or other imperatives.
Consistent with the emphasis on conservation we see vegetative greenness and free and open space as integral to the theme of eco-friendliness and enhanced urban development within the city of St. George’s. As with conservation of built structures we promote sustainability and continuance of vegetative green places and open spaces through rehabilitation of existing green spaces. In cases where new spaces were being created, we promote the concept of the “design-in” of green and open spaces as compensation for those sites that would have been inevitably lost as a result of unavoidable urban developments.
Green places, Open Spaces as an initiative, responds to challenges of climate change, with special enabling support from stakeholder participation, using both core activities coupled with a set of opportunity-driven initiatives.
Core activities that would initiate the project include: Development and environmental enhancement of 3 green and open sites within the city of St. George’s; Promotion of the adoption of a number of other small sites that would be highly visible to persons using access ways and roads; Education and awareness with respect to a wide set of issues and conditions regarding eco-friendliness within the urban environment, using various media but more especially news print media, also including the electronic and visually–enhanced media; Promotion of home gardens and hanging baskets at residents and other habitation such as commercial buildings within the city.
The Majority of sites for enhancement and for adoptions are public spaces. The Willie Redhead Foundation also promotes enhancement of privately owned sites, by their owners of course. On the other hand, the publicly owned sites which are Government-owned may need public policy prescriptions, procedures and practices for this type of site adoption process. The Willie Redhead Foundation is at an advanced stage in a process of negotiation with Government for facilitating a micro-site adoption process. It is anticipated that once this process is agreed upon, then potential site adopters would be invited to apply for sites of choice.
It is planned that two of the 3 sites to be enhanced by the project will be at River Road/ Darbeau. These two green site-enhancements would involve vegetative green areas that could also provide space for relaxation and recreation for residents. This development and enhancement activity within the project is designed to also provide temporary employment for community persons. A third site, planned for the Tanteen area could involve an existing green, a playing field, now used as a multi-purpose facility. This site-enhancement, although accommodating community persons in similar fashion as for the River Road/Darbeau sites, nevertheless will provide opportunity for business persons in the local area to contribute to the initiative.
The activities involving public education and awareness, through various media, will generate public discourse on issues and conditions such as: Greenness in the urban environment as response to the over-emphasis on human fabrications and built structures within the urban spaces; Options for management of roadways, access ways and other open and public spaces in and around the city; Environmentally healthy practices within the city and with a public health emphasis; Issues of “change –of-use” of space, involving new creations, together with use and disuse of spaces; Challenges for administration of Environmental compliance-control measures for the urban zones; Public discourse on special issues and conditions important to conservation within the urban environment and in the context of climate change responses; Community participation for environmental enhancement.
This public discourse, by way of the media, it is hoped, will be facilitated by a number of competent and knowledgeable community persons, most of them already indicating willingness and commitment to contribute on specific themes.
The fourth core activity, promotion of residential home gardens, including hanging gardens and other gardens at commercial locations in the urban zone, is meant to revive interest in and appreciation for urban gardens at limited spaces. Prospects are very good for the participation of competent and interested horticulturists in this promotion effort.
The Green places, Open spaces initiative is of 18 months duration, having begun in July 2009. The secondary and opportunity- driven activities of the project include:
• Set up and maintenance of a website specially adapted to engage the public on issues and conditions regarding eco-friendliness in and around the city. Hopefully such a website will enhance the project, portray progress and engage the public in discourse using text and visuals and even more up- to-date media as the current technology and opportunity would permit.
• The Willie Redhead Foundation is in the process of negotiating assistance from local internet services providers for that purpose. The Foundation is also engaging the other non-print media for facilitating public discourse and other engagements.
This Green Places, Open spaces initiative has provided opportunity for the Willie Redhead Foundation to engage a number of stakeholders ranging from Government agencies to private sector vested interest groups, regarding their concerns on a range of issues and condition with respect to urban St. George’s.
Stakeholders gave various suggestions on how they thought the public, as the chief agents of change, might be engaged. Their main concerns were for historicity, image and character of the built heritage, “change-of-use” of residential and commercial spaces, competition for open spaces especially those that are publicly-owned, disuse of spaces and utilities, designing-in greenness into newer spaces as an integral part of the architecture.
The Willie Redhead Foundation realises that engagement with stakeholders on the issues will inevitably generate differing view points and even tensions but we also recognize that public discourse always leads to changes that are best suited to the local circumstances once civility is embraced as guiding principle.
So far the key local stakeholders enabling this initiative include: Government of Grenada, seeing that public sites are so essential for success; a number of private sector entities who donated newsprint space together with advertisement space for which tWRF is especially grateful. Of course community persons at local areas within the city already provided some enabling resource support or have indicated that they will consider being adopters of sites of choice; importantly the newsprint media have donated pledges and have also pledged cooperation. This Green places Open spaces project was made possible through the generous seeding support from the Global Environmental Facility, Small Grants Program, administrated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
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