If you’ve ever driven through a city without green spaces, you know the feeling. It’s dark, drab, and lifeless. Even the most industrial cities can be revitalized by adding trees, grass, bushes, and planter boxes. Even better, the more outdoor spaces you create in a city, the more likely you are to see people getting out into them. Yes, outdoor spaces are essential to breathing energy into a community. Here’s why:

Playgrounds Are Ideal Meeting Spaces

Parents around the world would likely line up to tell you how lonely it can be to have young kids. Especially if you don’t have friends with kids or family close, sitting at home with your little ones all day often feels isolating. Yet there are few places to go meet other lonely parents out with their kids. Aside from the library, most indoor spaces will charge a fee to hang out and entertain your child. This leaves parents to find local parks, which can be both a refuge and a sanctuary. 

Visit any local park, and you’re bound to find parents lounging on benches while their kids make friends on outdoor playground equipment. Even better, lots of parents actually make friends in parks, too. Some will form meetups and playdates, and you can find droves of toddlers playing in the sand while moms and dads take a break. These outdoor spaces are critical to parents in need of fellowship and commiseration over the trials of keeping tiny humans alive. 

Open Spaces Are Easier for Parents With Kids

In addition to being a great meeting place, outdoor, open spaces are easier for parents struggling to manage kids. Shopping or eating indoors can be a hectic experience for parents, especially of little ones. You constantly have to make sure they’re not breaking something, knocking something over, or screaming. It’s a reality for parents that those without kids, or with grown children, tend to overlook.

Outdoor spaces like parks, hiking trails, and even nature preserves offer parents a bit of a breather from these stresses. So, you’ll often find parents more relaxed and able to engage with other adults while their kids explore playgrounds, nature, or even just an open field. Ensuring you have plenty of these outdoor locations in your city can go a long way toward welcoming people from all walks of life to spend time in shared spaces together. 

Outdoor Events Are Fun

Do you want to revitalize a community? Schedule outdoor events in open spaces in your city. Sure, communities can come together at City Hall for city council meetings. City dwellers might even encounter each other while out shopping in local stores or eating at restaurants. But those experiences can often be negative (fighting over city legislation) or fleeting (waving hi at the bookstore). These aren’t ideal opportunities for building community. 

Outdoor events, in stark contrast, are a great way to bring people together over something fun. A Fourth of July picnic day, a Day of the Dead festival, or a Christmas tree lighting are all experiences that tend to spark joy in attendees. They’re a great chance to get people to chat about local happenings, the holidays, their costumes, and more. They also send the message to your community that you are all part of something larger, which is a great feeling. 

Corporate events taking place outside are often talked about for their relaxed atmosphere and engaging setups that bring people together. Nevada professionals operating around Clark County often hire expert AV labor and staffing solutions in Las Vegas with Audio Visual Nation to make sure every sound system, stage light, and visual element enhances the outdoor experience. Their teams handle the unique challenges that come with open-air venues, from managing acoustics to weatherproofing equipment. With their support, organizers can focus on creating memorable events that run smoothly from start to finish.

One Word: Barbecue

Barbecues are the lifeblood of many communities. There are few things that bring people together like eating food outside. Again, you can have a giant spaghetti feed or a bake-off in a recreation center or local dining hall. The people who attend will have a good time. But arriving at a location that requires you to walk inside a building can be off-putting for many. It often feels like the spotlight focuses on you when you walk in the door. 

A barbecue stimulates the exact opposite of this feeling for many people. You can show up at a park with people milling around and get a feel for what you’re walking into while you’re still in the parking lot. Barbecues in local parks offer people the chance to warm up to each other, start conversations, and break bread — or hot dogs. Even more introverted people can show up and hang back while still feeling like part of the community. 

Clean-Ups and Gardens Get People Involved

One way outdoor spaces can revitalize a community that many won’t think of is through community organizing and volunteering. More than 50% of the U.S. population volunteered to help their neighbors at the height of the pandemic. People want to help each other. They want to get involved, and helping brings people together. Often, it seems, people don’t volunteer or help out because they just don’t know how to get involved. 

Organizing a community clean-up, planning a community garden, or revitalizing a park can be a great way to get locals involved. These are all opportunities for parents to bring kids out and teach them about community service. Introverts and shy people can join without feeling pressured to socialize. And new residents can come out to meet their neighbors. Meanwhile, your outdoor spaces are getting a facelift!

So many reasons exist to ensure your city is filled with outdoor spaces for residents to enjoy. They bring people together, remind them they’re a community, and encourage them to have fun. Whether it’s a playground or a nature trail, outdoor spaces meant to be shared are ideal locations to generate excitement and energy around your city, county, or state. People want to be part of something larger than themselves, and they often just need to be shown the way.

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United Arab Emirates might hold the Guinness World Record for Holding the Most Guinness World Records, and one of those prizes goes to the world’s fastest ride: the Formula 1 Rollercoaster at Abu Dhabi’s Ferrari World (itself a record winner as the world’s largest indoor theme park).

Fasten your safety goggles to protect against Abu Dhabi dust and blast onto the track at a denture-rattling speed of 150 mph in under four seconds.  Enjoy an extreme gravity Botox-face as you shoot 52 meters into the sky. It’s rollercoaster as RACECAR <– spell that backwards or forwards, it still screams fast! But Global financial markets provide enough public titillation: perhaps it’s time to reinvent these thrilling rides? How about a human powered roller coaster for a change?

How much power is chewed up pushing us around these metal mountains?

Ferrrari uses technology akin to the jet launching systems on aircraft carriers. You with strong eco-sensibilities (or weak stomachs) might consider these alternatives, maybe coming soon to an enviro-park near you:

Duisberg, Germany recently unveiled a large-scale public sculpture whose swoops and twists trace an eco-friendly graffiti over a rural landscape.

This “stroller-coaster” is an elevated pedestrian walkway laid out like a real rollercoaster, reaching 21 meters high and offering fantastic views of the Western Ruhr.

Called “Crouching Tiger and Turtle”,  it’s suggestion of speedy travel can only be experienced at a pedestrian crawl. From a distance the track creates an illusion of thrilling acceleration, but up close it’s just a crazy tilting stairway which follows the virtual ‘coaster’s course .

Visitors walk onto the sculpture at ground level and wind their way to it’s highest accessible point, where unlike on a real ride, they can pause to soak in the extraordinary views.  This interactive art is open to the public day and night, after sunset the piece is gorgeously illuminated by a necklace of LED lights.

Want relatively more speed?  Check out the Skycycle at Okayama’s Washuzan Highland Park.

This pedal-powered rollercoaster requires aerobic ability, and the flimsy bike-like vehicles cruising its mountainside perch might best Abu Dhabi for World’s Scariest Ride.

Maybe Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism could be incited to  install one of these babies in Amman’s King Hussein Park or the Jordan Valley’s Sharhabil Bin Hassneh EcoPark.

It would be a “lifestyle attraction” right on track with the nation’s goals of 21st Century leadership in eco-tourism, sustainable development and energy independence.

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