Clean Spaces, Community Building, and Urban Stage: the Coproduction of Health and Parks in Low-Income Neighborhoods

Green zones are potential contributors to health by mitigating disparities between low- and high-income neighborhoods. Against the background of different discourses about city parks-parks as restorative environments, parks as enabling places, and parks as sites for encounters between strangers-we ethnographically studied the coproduction of green spaces and health within low-income neighborhoods. We found three competing notions of urban green, each tied to different notions of neighborhood well-being. Parks as "clean spaces" create expectations of order and peace; parks as places of the community are related to play and activities; and parks as urban stage foster interactions between strangers. By generating experiences that encompass different conceptions of health, citizen-led events can contribute to a shift in the understanding of parks as sites of neighborhood decline to parks as places of hope and new beginnings.