Questão 18 - FMPFM 2024

Read the text below to answer question.

 

In Pricey London, Free Parks Are a Cherished Haven

 

By Isabella Kwai

Sept. 25, 2023

 

In a city where damp, gray days can seem to drag on interminably even in summer, London’s playing fields and green spaces tend to teem with life whenever the weather cooperates.

And people in the capital have an enviable amount of op ons: Urban planners have called London one of the greenest ci es in the world, with an intertwined and diverse medley of leafy squares, parks both vast and small, and other oases of grass and trees amid the urban conges on.

London is also one of the world’s most expensive cities.

But its public parks and green spaces, o en called “the lungs of London,” are free, places where all the city’s nearly nine million residents — wherever they are and whoever they are — can go to relax and escape the city’s pressures.

Urban experts say the idea of the public park as a democra c space — in a cramped city with deep socioeconomic inequali es — stems from Victorian mes, when campaigners fought for Londoners to have equitable access to green space for health reasons. Officials bought land and opened new public parks in this era, as Bri sh ci es urbanized.

“There’s a cultural expecta on of access to green space,” said Meredith Whi en, a fellow at the London School of Economics, whose research focuses on the urban environment.

The value of London’s green space became especially apparent during the Covid-19 lockdowns, with parks offering a cherished reprieve. But as parks became even more important with so much of the city shu ered, it was widely noted that the city’s green spaces, too, could underscore exis ng dispari es: Residents of some poorer neighborhoods needed to go much farther afield than others to reach a green refuge.

Adapted from:nymes.com/interac ve/2023/09/25/world/europe/l ondon-parks.html

According to the text, why are there so many public parks and green spaced in London?