Councils need to Pivot their Parks assets Usage NOW!
Most Councils and Government community assets are in full lock-down. Now more than ever, Local Councils Must Pivot their focus on what their Communities Can and Will do instead.
Basketball stadiums? Closed
Swimming Pools? Closed
Theaters? Closed
Libraries? Closed
Community Halls? Closed
Around the country these critical social assets are in shut down. And with them the absolutely vital community asset that enabled social cohesion and mental health support. But as a species, we do NOT sit still in times of stress until we have entered the phase of ‘Learned Helplessness’. Learned helplessness can be defined as a state where even when an opportunity for relief is present, the past history of discovering there is ‘no way out of the suffering’ teaches the person to not take action even when a way out has been identified’. Instead the person has mentally ‘given up and accepted their state of suffering’. Councils CANNOT allow that to happen.
So if people are not going to sit still, where will people go for relief? OUTSIDE.
And Outside means PARKS. Right now Councils MUST ‘pivot’ their operations to ramp up passive use of parks – walking, running, taking the dog for a walk, throwing a ball or frisbee within self-contained family units, reading a book on one’s own; the park based home office area and more. Councils must move beyond a ‘maintenance’ component to one in which additional temporary seating is available – all at safe distances. Where temporary fencing or visual barriers help create additonal safe spaces to congregate with one’s own family or on one’s own. Councils could consider things like identifying spaces for temporary creative works to be developed (sculpture, street painting (inc Graffiti murals) chalk parks and so on). Councils should see that Parks can take advantage of the cessation of structured and scheduled sporting activties and commandeer that space for the much larger demand for passive/non scheduled activity. More seats, more pop up desks/tables
Right now, Councils will be letting staff go through enforced layoffs. One spot for them to reallocate staff in a meaningful way is in re-creation of parks as broader social assets by redesigning how they operate as a community space.
The other is home delivery of food when Stage 4 kicks in – but that’s another post
Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will be kicking off proceedings at the 2008 Regional Produce Summit in Wangaratta on the 20th of October where he’ll detail some of the emerging issues likely to impact upon the tourism and food sector in the foreseeable future and suggest ways that businesses in the sector might be able to…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will both key note and act as Master of Ceremonies at the Lockhart Industrial symposium on the 9th of October, in Lockhart NSW. Marcus will discuss the clear business advantages that Eco Industrial parks provide to businesses, the way that symbiotic supply chains work to improve business resilience and the way…
Read More >Marcus Barber joined host Tim Cox and co-host, author and writer Andrew Peglar on the Conversation hour to muse about the types of futures one might expect to see in coming years. After Tim asked for clarification between a General, Theoretical and Strategic Futurist, Andrew kicked off with a question over the singularity. The…
Read More >Members of the Futures Foundation and the AFFA will be congregating in Pearl Beach in the coming weeks to consider the state of play in the Australian Futures community. Given the emerging challenges in Australia and around the world, the futures community requires just as much serious contemplation and forethought as does any one …
Read More >One of our many Nordic watchers, Are Thorsteinsson, has posted the Future Matters segment looking at the future of robotics, along with marking up full language captions in Danish. Although a couple of years old now, the early signs listed in this segment are only now coming into more mainstream focus Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber has contributed a chapter to Volume Five of the ‘Death and Anti-Death’ Anthology which has just been published by Ria University. With contributors including Aubrey de Grey and Kevin Kelly and edited by Dr. Charles Tandy, Volume Five in the series is dedicated to the memory of Loren Eiseley, the renowned…
Read More >One of the challenges for one aspect of the world is fuel and the price of fuel used for private transportation. I use the word ‘aspect’ quite deliberately because the ‘aspect of the world’ that seems to be making the most noise about rising fuel prices is by and large the ‘westernised’ world – that’s…
Read More >With the theme ‘Moving Forward, Supply Chains of the Future’, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will open the Australian Supply Chain and Logistics Conference in Brisbane in July on behalf of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Australia. Details for the conference can be found below. The focus on the future of supply chains…
Read More >When it comes to quality strategic futures work as part of making the pragmatic decisions that shifts beyond theoretical futures work, I encourage my clients to question the assumptions they make about the information they have available to them. Which is why I am recommending the book ‘Gang Leader for a day – a rougue…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber was well and truly forced to justify the existence of his profession when venturing along to Jon Faine’s Conversation Hour last week. Co-hosted by Cath Pope the discussion looked at the role of Futurists, the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Jon’s scepticism around the role of futurists.. Along with Janoel Liddy,…
Read More >