Green spaces, red budgets: a legal right to nature would help capture their real value

Mid-summer is one of those very rare moments where Londoners and workers and residents of other British cities and large towns can think of only one thing at lunchtime and after work: where is there a park when I can sit down and eat lunch or just absorb the sunlight? Being able to get some time in the open space and, hopefully, feel some breeze and find some shade in the open air is of high value.

Public parks enhance the quality of cities by offering free social spaces and bringing elements of nature to city dwellers. The trees in the parks contribute to cooling and cleaning the air while supporting local wildlife. During the Covid-19 lockdowns, parks became even more crucial as they remained accessible when other gathering spots and travel options were restricted. The question remains whether these cherished community resources can be assigned a monetary worth. Most people consider parks important for their quality of life. In fact, UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities” includes the aim of providing “universal access to safe, inclusive, and accessible green and public spaces”.

Economists talk about “willingness to accept” (WTA) or the smallest amount that someone will want to be paid to give up the right to a service. One study using WTA, by Cambridge university’s Bennett Institute of Public Policy,  looked at parks during the Covid-19 lockdowns and found that people in London would, on average, want to be paid more than £3,600 a year not to use a park. Given that more than nine out of 10 Londoners were using a park at the time — there was precious little else to do — that figure might be a little inflated.

Another way of looking at the intangible gain for park users is to look at how living near a park feeds into property prices (especially valuable for people without their own gardens or balconies). Research in the US has suggests a 20% premium on prices of properties abutting a park while a study in China finds that every percentage point increase in the distance from the home to the park took 0.02% off the price. Another benefit is a reduction in health costs as more time in the open air leaves people fitter and healthier and thus reduces their likelihood of suffering an illness. One study for the US city of Seattle put combined health savings due to park use at US$64.1 million in 2010 values.

Boston Public Gardens. Photo by Josephine Baran on Unsplash

But, of course, while people may value access to parks or relish house prices appreciation, that is not the same as providing money to the owners (usually cash-strapped local councils) who look after them. Local authorities have had their budgets slashed since the 2010 austerity programme: over the 14 years to 2024 core funding has fallen around 8 per cent in real terms, according to the IFS thinktank.

Drill down deeper and some admittedly out-of-date calculations by London Councils showed that borough expenditure on public green spaces had declined by 18% over the four years to 2014 in real terms, including a significant drop of over 10% in just the 2014/15 financial year alone. By 2022, councils across England had reduced their annual spending on parks and public green spaces by nearly £330 million when adjusted for inflation compared to ten years earlier, with the poorest communities facing the most severe budget reductions.

Value for money

Parks cost money to maintain (usually funded by payments by taxpayers who do not all use the spaces) but on the other hand they deliver benefits to users and to society that likely outweigh those costs. One study found that while Sheffield’s parks sit as a £16 million liability on the city’s balance sheet, the value they provide amounts to £1.2 billion. In other words, for each pound of taxpayer funding invested, society gains £34 worth of value in return. At this point, readers might be asking “So how do we turn that value into real money for upkeep of the parks?” Few would want admission charges to be imposed and hopefully the UK’s decision to end charges for general access to public museums and art galleries will be seen as an example of a mistaken policy.

One option would be to take parks out of local authorities’ financial accounts so the budget for spending does not have to compete with other, perhaps more politically urgent, needs — perhaps by putting them into some form of trust. A few years ago, the government set up a pilot programme with the National Trust, the Future Parks Accelerator, with the National Lottery putting in £14 million. An evaluation by Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University found £43 million of extra investment.

The former Green MP Caroline Lucas won a parliamentary debate three years ago on the question of putting a right to nature into law that would have created a “duty” by public authorities when exercising their functions under levelling-up legislation to have special regard to that right. It was not put to a vote but hopefully laid down the intellectual basis for future measures that will guarantee respect and funding for this asset that brings so many benefits to so many people.

Global South cities require urgent injection of climate finance

Flash floods that swept through cities in China’s Guangdong province in May 2025, forcing more than 3,000 people to evacuate, was an unwelcome reminder of the impact that the weather can have on urban environments in the global South.

With climate change seen as a major contributing factor to floods and other disasters, cities continues to brace for more damaging and potentially fatal event. According to WaterAid, nine out of 10 climate disasters are water-related while weather-related disasters such as flooding and drought have increased by 400% in the last 50 years.

Flood in Hongyang Town, Guangdong Province, China. Image credit, Weather Monitor

Over the half century leading up to 2021, the world’s urban population ballooned from 1.19 billion to 4.46 billion residents, coinciding with a 1.2°C rise in global temperatures compared to pre-industrial times. Indeed, cities account for 70 per cent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

While cities have contributed significantly to climate change through the economic growth they've fostered, they also represent key sources for climate solutions—particularly important given that nearly 70 per cent of humanity will live in urban areas by 2050. But how much will the adaptation and mitigation work and who will pay?

In a detailed report published in June 2025, Banking on Cities, the World Bank has attempted to put a price tag on the cost of redeveloping cities in its core clientele of low- and middle-income countries in more resilient and low-carbon ways.

Certainly, people living in the cities of the Global South are particularly vulnerable to effects of climate change. They are more likely to host informal settlements without adequate defences against floods and high winds. They are often located on coasts, making them more vulnerable to tidal floods. On top of that, a history of colonisation and exploitation has left many with a lack of resources to address the challenge of climate change.

Capital for capitals

The takeaway from the 170 pages of analysis is that the annual bill will range from $256 billion to as much as $821 billion. Since it is looking at a 30-year investment programme the cost vaults up to a total of between $7.9 trillion and $25.5 trillion. Inevitably this dwarfs the $831 billion in urban capital finance that the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance estimated was raised in 2021–2022.

It is worth remembering that this is the estimate for low- and middle-income countries rather from the higher and middle-income cadre, where costs of both clear-up and prevention would likely be higher — although of course finance may be easier to access because of the sophistication of capital markets in most northern hemisphere.

At the most recent summit of heads of state, COP29, nations agreed to a new goal of providing at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate action in developing countries. While much will likely to cities there is no guarantee of that. For that reason city leaders used the annual meetings of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund to demand a seat at the table when monies are allocated.

Leaders at COP29 also called on all players to work towards a target of mobilising $1.3 trillion in international finance. Certainly, the bulk of the finance will need to come from private and philanthropic finance as many governments are either nursing their own debts, such as the UK, and/or are turning away from international overseas aid, such as the US. The World Bank urged cities to focus on three targets: securing funding; arranging financing; and maximizing efficiency.

They can find their own funding even in straightened times from sources such as fees for public transport and waste collection or taxes from higher values property. Finance can come from securing so called hybrid finance — partnerships between the public and private sectors — and instruments such as green bonds.

Thames Barrier, east London. Picture: author

The idea of a funding gap for measures needed to help poorer countries that should, both morally and practically, filled by richer countries is very familiar. Wealthy countries can be decisive and loosen the taps when they want: after the devasting floods of 1953 the UK government pushed through the plan to build the Thames Barrier. It cost £535 million or approximately £2.4 billion in today’s money). It has been raised closed 221 times in 42 years, each of which may have prevented billions of pounds of damage in its financial and wealthy residential districts.

While rich countries should morally fund efforts to protect millions of vulnerable people in poorer countries, there is also a selfish motive. As floods and tornadoes either destroy or make coastal cities uninhabitable it will create a new wave of migration by climate refugees. Given how sensitive migration is in the Global North that is perhaps the most powerful motive for financiers in the West to loosen the purse strings.

Sterile city: how the elites’ fight to preserve their privilege undermines the city’s future

Almost exactly 10 years ago a councillor at the London Borough of Camden lashed out at well-heeled local residents objecting to a new Sainsbury’s opening in Belsize Park to “check their privilege”, warning that the area was in danger of becoming “too posh”. The objectors won after the company dropped its plan. The site is now a Pret a Manger.

The campaigners had successfully prevented another Tesco from opening on the same site while Sainsbury’s also raised the white flag over two other contested sites with half a mile from that one (one of which is still boarded up). The net result is that this mixed area has two mid-sized supermarkets, a Marks & Spencer and a former Budgens now run by an Irish chain as a “world class food emporium”, neither of which is best known for offering cut-price value for money.

The councillor, Theo Blackwell (now a senior figure at London City Hall), said that the new store would have benefitted residents on lower incomes and provided more choice. His telling three-word phrase encapsulated what was then an emerging trend for the established home-owning classes within London to act swiftly and concertedly to retain the status quo.

While this may seem a trivial example, it is one of an array of forces that threaten to leave London a sterile place, denied of variety and lacking in services that are needed, used and often provided by a large swathe of the city population. While some parts of London are succeeding in preserving their privilege, others are changing in nature as part of a gentrification process that is squeezing out the less well off.

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

Right to the city

From an urban geography perspective, this can be seen as a battle for the right to the city, as I discussed in May. This term, first set out by the French Marxist sociologist and philosopher, Henri Lefebvre, sees all people living in cities having the right to influence how their urban environment develops, no matter their legal status, background, physical capabilities or identity.

While anyone can be said to have right to the city, fellow Marxist thinkers such as David Harvey have said that the focus when thinking about ensuring everyone has that right should be on those who find themselves losing their rights — the poor, the underprivileged and those marginalised from political power. So how does this theoretical analysis map out on the ground?

The gentrification process taking place across London over the last few decades has seen urban renewal schemes replacing affordable housing for working and middle-class families with upscale developments. These new areas typically feature high-end residential units —often within gated, privately-controlled spaces — alongside international chain stores, temporary retail concepts, and high-priced dining and entertainment venues.

A brilliant piece of analysis of government data by The Londoner last year showed that in the prior 12 months, more than 50% of new housing construction consisted of two-bedroom properties. Nearly all remaining new builds were one-bedroom units. Just 10% of newly constructed homes featured three bedrooms, while an extremely small portion—merely 2%—contained four bedrooms or more. This represents the lowest proportion of larger homes since data collection started in 1991, tied with previous record lows.

On top of that the capital has the most expensive childcare in the country, where parents pay an average of £218 per week for one part-time nursery place. Given that and the shortage of family housing, it should be no surprise that birth rates in London are among the lowest in England with a birth rate of 1.41 children per woman in 2022 below the England and Wales average of 1.49.

Sterilisation

The shortage of affordable family homes coming on the market combined with a surfeit on one- and two-bedroomed “luxury” homes will inevitably change the mix of the population in that area, attracting the young and mobile as well as investors. While the elite groups and capitalist property developers are claiming their right to the city, the more marginalised and less well-resourced are losing ground.

One visible sign of the impact of the exodus is the rash of closures of primary schools across the capital as the number applying for state school places tumbles. The latest examples are two schools in Southwark, Charlotte Sharman and St Mary Magdalene that are set to close on 31 August. Aa local councillor put it: “Families are being priced out, and the result is plummeting pupil numbers, leaving our local schools in increasingly difficult positions.”

But if more families well from less well-off backgrounds are moving out of the city, then at some point the growing population of high-earning singletons and couples will find the services they rely on, both public and private, falling down as this accidental sterilisation programme leads to fewer workers able to travel to work to fulfil these roles.

There is no right to the city set in law anywhere other than Brazil, which put into statute in 2001. Elsewhere these rights are decided in the courts of law and public opinion and in the media. Perhaps the only remaining options who those who feel they are losing their right to the city is to copy the example of Belsize Park middle class and get there and protest, loudly.