ABSTRACT
Urban public green spaces (defined as parks and landscaped spaces under public ownership within urban areas but excluding peri-urban green belts and conservation areas) usually require external, off-site sourced budgets to meet financial costs for their maintenance and upkeep. In ‘income versus expenditure’ terms, most projects or spaces cost municipal authorities more money than they generate. The Adelaide Parklands, for example, annually costs the Adelaide City Council AU$9 million for maintenance ($11,842 per hectare (/ha) and $22,895/ha maintenance and capital works), yet the annual income generated is below $1 million (Cook,
pers. com., 2014), while the (British) National Audit Office estimates that the cost of maintaining and renovating urban green space (in England) was UK£700 million in 2004/05 (NAO, 2006). In the Western world’s present politically austere climate, a central focus on the financial bottom-line routinely affects public services, whereby existing public green spaces are frequently targeted for cost-cutting, leading to reduced expenditure and upkeep (Dunnett et al, 2002; CABE Space, 2004: 3; Loukaitou-Sideris, 2006; Sherer, 2006; Foderaro, 2014). Budgets for green space expenditure are heavily reliant on the often-unstable
fiscal and planning cycles of politics and governments (NAO, 2006; Sherer, 2006: 12). In recent decades in the USA, UK and Australia, the overall trend for maintenance spending on existing green spaces has been in decline (NAO, 2006) – heightened since the 2008 global financial crisis (local authority spending on open spaces in the UK was, for instance, cut by 10.5 per cent between 2010/11 and 2012/13 (Drayson, 2014: 8)). Reduced budgets in turn lead to degradation and lower appeal (Sherer, 2006), often resulting in undesirable and unsociable activities (CABE Space, 2004: 4; Drayson, 2014: 7). Vandalism, graffiti and illegal dumping cost municipal authorities additional revenue (SPUR, 2012) as well as increased output for surveillance, lighting and deterrents of anti-social behaviour. In order to be successful, the introduction of economically generative land uses
need to both meet public expectations and to operate within the common good (Linn, 1999). Traditional measures of economic viability (revenues, jobs, profits) must be used, if for no other reason than to attract the attention and support of funders and policy-makers (Smit in Lazarus, 2005: 22). Securing a reliable income source and increasing sociable usage are, however, in
the interests of both participants and green space designers and managers (planners, landscape architects, municipal authorities, open space managers and maintenance staff) (Sherer, 2006). This chapter explores the gross economic potential that urban agriculture could contribute to existing green spaces within developed countries (although calculations are not intended to be directly applicable to any specific site). Gross financial sums are calculated and provided incrementally, relative to instigating urban agriculture as a percentage of the area of several existing green spaces (10-50 per cent). This research does not intend to examine or propose appropriate funding, regulatory, legal and planning models or structures for public urban agriculture in green space as this requires further research and trialling (Cabannes & Dubbeling, 2001). Instead, the chapter tests scenarios using simplified modelling, raises issues that require further attention and makes recommendations based on findings.
