Last week was delighted to be invited to speak at the Vision Conference in London on the history and future of the public park, the health benefits of greenspace and new innovations in this area. 

Both Australia and the U.K are grappling with similar stresses on greenspace in their cities. As the evidence base for natural environments increases so too does the appetite to develop, densify and in some places 'get rid' of natural environments so critical to our health and well-being. 

Despite this both countries are responding to this challenge. At the conference I compared the two approaches; with the green infrastructure, landscape institute and local authorities battling not just in some cases rampant development, but austerity with knowledge and advocacy. In Australia I focussed on what I think is a fantastic new model by which the U.K and my countries could learn: the 202020 Vision.

The 202020 Vision sets out an agenda for Australian cities to have 20% more and better green space by 2020. Its a major collaboration between the horticultural industry who (no pun intended) have provided seed funding through levies on nurseries. It was then expanded out and signatories and allies include industry, AILA (the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects), state governments, local government, councils, developers, major design and engineering firms and academics and universities. Well over 350 signatories. 

What is perhaps so clever about the Vision is not only the broad consensus they're establishing but quite literally the ambitious assertiveness of the approach.

"How business, government, education and community

can work together to create 20% more green space in

our urban areas by 2020."

I spoke to Nina Stott of the Bravery, part of their comms team on their approach to advocating for the green environment. She described how in 2013, the way the team took a broad consultation process around the country to understand how and where difficulties arose in creating and retaining green space. These issues ranged as widely as funding and investment issues - e.g. if a developer is going to include trees they would like to know what the pay-off in monetary terms will be. If a city is to create an 'urban forest' they need to know how to map and calculate. What are the policy and planning conditions needed to ensure green space is enhanced? How do people become part of the program? 

Answers to these questions have created a series of incredibly interesting solutions: guidance to policy makers, value added calculators for developers 'a green to gold calculator' that will actually calculate pay-off in dollars, programs and seminars on creating urban forests and very clever marketing engagement to assist in the promotion of our green spaces. 

One such example is the My Park Rules project (see innovations page soon). The My Park Rules project takes the impetus for creating greenspace by into the public sphere by encouraging around 100 schools to compete in Australia for $100,000 to upgrade their local playground or park. Great stuff, and very clever in that the cause is taken up by youth and school children, - tapping into everybody's latent competitive side. The competition eventually narrowed down by vote to a school per state and some of the best landscape architects in the country provided designs for the schools. Although one eventual winner was chosen, each school now has a real plan that in most cases is now receiving fundraising for.  

The combination of intelligence, collaboration across industries and real genius in approach means that the 202020 Vision is a model that I believe should and can be replicated world wide.