Parks, public health, and the politics of urban greenspace: visualising the ‘lungs of the community’ in Northampton, UK

Within this visual essay, we share some personal, poetic, political and artistic reflections on why parks matter for public health. Insights are mostly drawn from a qualitative research project that sought to understand the everyday significance of urban greenspaces to people and communities. Through images, illustrations, storytelling and critical commentary, we explore what were considered the ‘lungs of the community’ to many of the park visitors we interviewed in Northampton, UK. Whilst our focus could be considered geographically specific, we situate our discussion against a broader context of neoliberal policies and practices that are dominant across many Western capitalist societies. Such a political landscape has contributed to funding for public goods, such as parks, to suffer deep and enduring cuts. This leads us to argue for the international importance of protecting and publicly funding parks, as these key community spaces appear to be vital for people’s health, well-being and flourishing. To that end, we conclude by calling for policymakers to reclassify parks as statutory services, thus binding states to a legal responsibility to provide them to communities. Throughout, we also make comment on the merits of visual-based scholarship for knowledge generation in urban health studies broadly, and greenspaces research particularly.