Land
Why Small Parks Matter
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Ask natural scientists why small parks matter and you’ll hear about habitats, biodiversity, carbon sequestration and buffer zones between developments. Ask the same question to social scientists and you’ll hear about maintaining human connections with nature, centers of community concern, neighborhood identity and healthy outdoor activities. Small parks can even serve a public policy purpose as a political rallying point. That happened last year in Turkey when government plans to develop 9-acre Taksim Gezi Park — one of Istanbul’s smallest parks and among the few remaining green spaces in the city’s BeyoÄŸlu district— triggered sit-ins and national demonstrations. From a humanist as well as scientific perspective, poet-environmental activist Wendell Berry has written that we need not cherish just the great public wildernesses” but small ones as well.