I first heard of pocket parks when Birgitte was giving a presentation about water sensitive urban design, and citizen participation. She mentioned Pocket Parks in Portland (I cannot hear Portland without saying to myself “Keep Portland weird!“)
When I went to find out more about pocket parks, there didn’t seem to be much out there.
Pocket parks are an emergent concept and ambiguously defined, with the only defining feature being their small size – typically smaller than 0.5 hectares. They are typically envisioned as small areas of blue-green infrastructure that serve as experimental sites for community-based management.
Why do I care? I’m looking for something that can serve as the place-based holding structure, to build community. Something that people can take charge of themselves, that they don’t need to wait for permission or someone else to implement at significant cost or as part of a 20 year urban design plan.
From my AquaCurious proposal (focused on Civic-Led Water Partnerships in particular): Urban water management is a monolithic, risk-averse regime, dominated globally by one deeply institutionalised configuration (centralised piped infrastructure) that is highly resistant to intervention. A DIY approach for water supply would be a poor-fit, high-conflict strategy in this context. Pocket parks sit within the more polycentric and weakly regimed urban greening arena, allowing space to build coalition-sustaining culture and curiosity-driven practice in a low-conflict setting, protected from the high-cost, high-risk water supply sector. Redirecting civic focus to the wider concerns around water sensitive cities, like flood protection, wastewater treatment and ecosystem services does not challenge the regime’s core function; it can instead free institutional capacity and resources for government to concentrate on the higher-risk, higher-investment work only it is positioned to do, while building the coalition relationship that legitimises further civic involvement over time. For the purpose of AquaCurious, I therefore carefully situate pocket parks as in between “individualist” punk/guerrilla/DIY urbanism and “mainstream, deference to authority” top-down, government initiated urban planning. Like parkrun, it is tactical urbanism defined as “civic-led but coalition-seeking”.
I think there’s potential to develop pocket parks into a brand.
Some pocket parks in Portland on yelp, and this news article on the “mini greenspaces”.
I am thinking of pocket parks in three areas:
- The vehicle of intervention for the AquaCurious application, as part of a gameful approach to “Cultivating Curiosity-Driven, Coalition Culture for Sustained Civic-Led Water Partnerships”
- Possibly as a similar vehicle of intervention in one of the AquaSavvy living labs, and maybe part of a competition. Early days…
- As an idea for improving biodiversity and climate resilience in Nordeste, Sao Miguel, Azores, where I live.
Then, there is the data-interoperability and data contribution thing, which currently feels like it sits separate and alien. Linking to this article, which I found on the parkrun mission:
Jiang, Y., Wai Michael Siu, K., Yang, J., Zhang, K., Liu, S., & Zhang, H. (2026). From data silos to data agency: The role of local sports communities as data agents in urban governance. Urban Studies, 0(0).
… ok I don’t have the thoughts in me now. More to follow.
Some academic references:
Jiang, D., Guo, R., Guo, F., Guo, X., & Zhang, Z. (2023). Pocket parks-a systematic literature review. Environmental Research Letters, 18(8), 083003–083003. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ace7e2
Wylie, S. A., Jalbert, K., Dosemagen, S., & Ratto, M. (2014). Institutions for civic technoscience: How critical making is transforming environmental research. The Information Society, 30(2), 116-126.
Li, J., Nordin, N. A., & Md Dali, M. (2024). Does small mean unimportant? A review of pocket park values and associated factors. Open House International, 50(1), 98–117. https://doi.org/10.1108/ohi-12-2023-0295