Urban Green Areas – their functions under a changing lifestyle of ...

First, rubbish accumulates in ill maintained parks: waste is not well collected; dead fish lie
in the polluted water of lakes and ponds; badly maintained sanitation units smell. Under
these circumstances rats multiply and people avoid these areas.
Second, when a park attracts not many people, it becomes deserted. This deserted place
often facilitates crimes, social evil and violence to occur, for instance, pick-pocket, sexual
crime, drug and violent attack. According to data recorded about “the occurrence of various
types of crimes for the year 2000”, BURKE (2007: 29) proves by the situation in for North
Nazimabad town (Pakistan).
(BURKE et al. 2007). Furthermore, open parks are often places where homeless people
reside. This situation makes parks lose their beauty, order and security of the areas. Also
YANEZ/MUZZY (2005: 1) conclude that “Unsafe, ill maintained and inequitably
distributed park space denies the residents” living in the park’s neighbouring.
Third, problems of dogs in parks are also very popular, e.g., un-safety, noise, sanitation and
location (HART et al. 2012). Parks become unsafe by cruel dogs. Cruel dogs scare many
people and children who just try to play with those dogs and do not know what could make
the dogs angry. Cruel dogs are not only dangerous for people by biting but also by their
activities, especially when those dogs are big. Dangers by dogs are recognized to the people
as well as other dogs. In additionally, the un-well behaviour and bad purposes of cruel
dog’s owners in parks are warning recently in the UK (SCHROER/SCHAFFRANKE
2004).
Even HART (et. al. 2012: 3/7) found “no correlation approaching significance between the
increase in noise level at dog parks during times of heavy use and ranking of park success”,
though noise of dog barking is also a type pollution. It breaks quite atmosphere for people
who want to relax.
Regarding to sanitation from dog, it is often in grass where people want to sit, on the path
where people walk on. As consequence, people go to park but do not dare to sit on grass
and enjoy nature; unlucky people step on dog feces become angry. Thus, a conflict among
dog owners and other park users is established. Those park users might do not go to the
parks any more.
Last but not least, parks are financial burden for public bodies because of costly and
compete in areas against other land-use purposes. Parks are often large areas and have
many facilities which requires investing costs for planning, designing, constructing. Then
when parks open to public uses, it requires maintaining and managing costs. Plus, parks are
public; they serve people for free or little fees which are little to pay employees, to maintain
parks or to continue new investing. In the second point, it is a big challenge for a city to
keep a park in a well located place. Because, when compare primary economic benefits
from a park and from a shopping centre, a park profits worse than a shopping centre in the
same size, at the same location. To keep a park instead of building a new shopping centre or
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