If you want to know how important green space is for cooped up urban dwellers, imagine Michuki Park in downtown Nairobi on its first weekend after it opened on August 14. Never have its 1,000-hectares – defended from land grabbers by Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai in 1999 and secured by activists and the Kenya Forest Service in 2010 – been more appreciated. Weekend visitors have doubled since the onset of Covid-19It represents the kind of green space all cities need but too few have. During lockdown, the government has almost doubled usable green space in Nairobi, created hundreds of green jobs, invited the public to plant roundabouts, and called for “optimal urban forest cover” in its draft Forestry Act. Urban green space includes street trees, school yards, roadside vegetation, parks, playgrounds, green corridors and urban woods.

Source: The Star August 31, 2020 03:00 UTC