ABSTRACT
Stockholm like other European cities has a wide range of open spaces: parks of different types, public and private gardens, schoolyards, playgrounds, churchyards, allotment gardens, sports grounds and so forth. As well as these open spaces of various colours and shades, shifting between the seasons, blue space is an important ingredient in the life of Stockholm. Situated in a coastal landscape on a series of islands, the city has been built in part on land recovered from the sea or from the infilling of lakes, but water remains today very present, with ships and boats docking in the central parts of the city. The terrain in Stockholm is generally rather rocky. Before the advent of the modern city the surrounding landscape, with ridges passing in a north-south direction, was to a large extent covered with forests, often of a rather low quality.
