An ambitious plan to turn London into the world’s first national park city has received the backing of the mayor, Sadiq Khan, and the majority of ward counsellors. It could now happen by 2019, and campaigners are calling on Londoners to back it by ‘rewilding’ as much of the urban landscape as possible.

“Already 47 per cent of the city is physically green because of our parks and gardens, and 2.5 per cent is blue because of our waterways,” said Daniel Raven-Ellison, founder of the London National Park City campaign. “We only need 0.5 per cent more green space to ensure that half of London is either green or blue.”

Good journalism can be about good things too.

Subscribe to Positive News magazine for some serious optimism

Installing green roofs, replacing concrete in gardens and putting plant pots on balconies could help the city reach the milestone, he said.

“Just letting part of gardens go feral is wonderful for wildlife. If everyone was to turn just 1 square metre of their home or garden into a green space, more of London would be green than grey.”

A former geography teacher, Raven-Ellison founded the campaign four years ago, after visiting all 15 of the UK’s national parks with his son.

“I thought ‘why shouldn’t an urban area be a national park?’,” he said.

St Paul’s Cathedral at springtime. Image: Jacob Hilton

The London Assembly, the Mayor of London and 53 per cent of the city’s ward councillors appear to agree and, by February 2018, had lent the campaign their backing. While the status will not bring any planning powers or add layers of bureaucracy, said Raven-Ellison, it will ‘add value’, by rebranding London as an ecological centre as well as a political, financial and cultural hub.

The capital has more than 3,000 parks, 1,600 sites of importance for nature conservation, two National Nature Reserves and 3.8m gardens. According to researchers Vivid Economics, London’s green spaces save the NHS £950 million each year due to the physical and mental boost they give to people.

“What a moment for London,” said author Robert Macfarlane, who writes about people’s connection with nature. “This is a celebration of the wealth of biodiversity and greenness that the city holds, and a vision for the future of how to deepen and improve our relations with the living world.”

Big Ben in the spring. Image: Ming Jun Tan

While acknowledging challenges that remain ahead, Raven-Ellison said it is an opportunity to look at London differently. It could make businesses, public services and residents rethink the way they interact with urban nature, he said.

“It’s about encouraging more people to spend more time outdoors and facing up to challenges such as air pollution and the decline of species. These are things that we have power over.”

Featured image: Hans Veth

This article is featured in issue 93 of Positive News magazine. Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.

The post London will become the world’s first national park city appeared first on Positive News.

Bold geometric patterns, mirrors and dazzling colours cover the walls: sure signs that I’ve entered Walala-land. Camille Walala’s latest project is a maze inside the Now Gallery in south-east London – a playground in which visitors can ‘unleash their inner child’.

After studying textile design in Brighton, Walala turned her attention to street art, painting messages like ‘dance more’ and ‘kiss more’ to lure the eyes, and spirits, of London’s commuters. Fast forward three years, and her instantly recognisable designs have transformed everything from a nondescript five-storey office block in the city, to a primary school.

I’m most proud when people tell me that I’ve brightened up their day.

Walala’s aim is simple: to make people smile. “I’m most proud when people tell me that I’ve brightened up their day,” she says. Her passion for colour is rooted in her childhood in southern France. “I was lucky to have blue sky pretty much every day and a very colourful house decorated by my mum,” she says. “I didn’t realise until I moved away how it uplifted my mood.”

She draws inspiration from the 1980s design movement the Memphis Group, and from African tribes like the Ndebele, as well as her adopted city. “I love London for its diversity and multiculturalism – and the food! But a splash of colour here and there would brighten up the place.”

Photography: Charles Emerson

This article is featured in issue 91 of Positive News magazine. Become a subscriber member to receive Positive News magazine delivered to your door, plus you’ll get access to exclusive member benefits

The post Must our cities be grey? Meet the queen of colour appeared first on Positive News.

When residents of a slum district on the island of Java in Indonesia decided their surroundings had become gloomy and grey, they took matters into their own hands.

Locals spent a month painting 200 buildings along the hillside in vivid colours, earning it the name Kampung Pelangi or ‘rainbow village’. From rooftops to gutters, almost every inch has been covered in stripes and artwork. Reportedly spearheaded by local headteacher Slamet Widodo, residents applied to the local government for funding in a bid to rejuvenate the district: a low-income part of Semarang, a town located around 280 miles from the capital Jakarta.

Almost every inch has been covered in stripes and artwork

The spot has become a tourist attraction, and an unlikely hit on social media, particularly on photo-sharing platform Instagram, where hundreds have uploaded pictures of the buildings.

Designs include psychedelic hearts, human-sized angel wings, dinosaurs and polka dots.

Images: Henky Hendrawan/Instagram

This article is featured in issue 90 of Positive News magazine. Become a subscriber member to receive Positive News magazine delivered to your door, plus you’ll get access to exclusive member benefits.

The post Residents transform ‘drab’ Indonesian village with rainbow facelift appeared first on Positive News.

Artists, urban designers, film-makers, architects, cartographers and others are being invited to enter a competition to help Londoners imagine their city if it were to become a national park. Those at the London National Park City initiative are seeking ‘ambitious and creative entries with the potential to transform how Londoners engage with the natural world’.

Judges, including the author Will Self as well as expert ecologists and urban designers, will select the most exciting images to be featured in Time Out London magazine. The deadline for entries is 19 May and winners will be announced on 5 June.

Daniel Raven-Ellison, guerrilla geographer and coordinator of the campaign, said: “We want to attract the best ideas for transforming the quality of life in London by making it a national park city. We’d love to see visionary ideas not just for new developments, but which re-imagine London’s current cityscape. Ideas can be small-scale and design in tiny changes that will have a big impact on Londoners’ lives, or they could be large scale, imagining changes to streetscapes, neighbourhoods, or the whole watershed.”

Raven-Ellison said he wanted designers to ‘do what they do best’ to imagine a greener city, in which residents make decisions about how best to improve their environments, as well as enjoy urban nature and wildlife.

We’d love to see visionary ideas not just for new developments, but which re-imagine London’s current cityscape

“It’s not just about the green though,” he added. “We’d like people to take a look at the London National Park City website and then let their imaginations go to work. Be bold, be brilliant!”

The campaign to make London a national park city, which was launched in 2014, aims to transform London’s habitat. It considers gardens, streets, rivers, buildings and parks as one landscape and wants the natural world to be integrated ‘more fully into urban life’. The campaign’s vision includes protecting and improving existing parks, green and wild spaces to ensure that all Londoners have easy and free access to high-quality green space, boosting the capital’s biodiversity, and also addressing how the built environment itself can achieve these aims.

For more information and to enter visit www.nationalparkcity.london/imagine

Image: Luke Massey and the Greater London National Park City Initiative

Reasons to support Positive News

#2: It’s serious optimism 
We showcase quality, independent reporting that focuses on progress and possibility. No waterskiing squirrels, just good journalism with a solutions-focused approach.

The post Campaign to make London a national park city launches competition appeared first on Positive News.