Green infrastructure in the time of social distancing: Urban policy and the tactical pandemic urbanism

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic generated a number of changes in the functioning of urban areas all over the world and had a visible impact on the use of green infrastructure, including city parks. The study discusses and compares operation and use of two such parks located in Wellington, New Zealand and Warsaw, Poland by adopting ʺpandemic urban ethnographyʺ, an approach that in-cludes autoethnography, interviews with users, non‐participant observation, and analysis of social media content. As indicated by the findings of the study, the importance of less rigidly designed, multifunctional spaces that give their users freedom of ʺtacticalʺ adjustments, significantly grows during times of lockdown and ʺsocial distancingʺ. During such a crisis, the management and every-day use of urban parks are highly related to urban policies. The article provides insight into how those policies impact the functional values of green infrastructure confronting it with user‐gener-ated adaptations and the landscape design itself. The global health emergency showed how access to green areas becomes a crucial determinant on environmental justice while proving the significance of ʺtactical pandemic urbanismʺ as both a design and management method.