Past Program

The global pandemic has created major challenges for urban parks and protected areas around access, budgeting and maintenance amongst other things. However demand and the awareness of the importance of urban green spaces has arguably never been higher and this creates interesting opportunities for post-pandemic thinking.

This roundtable, part of the Urban Parks, Urban Futures series, is a chance to hear from two European cities, Tirana and Glasgow, that were each due to host major conservation and parks events in 2020. The conversation will be anchored in a discussion around three key questions:

• What are the major challenges that the pandemic has created for urban parks and protected areas?
• Have those challenges created new ways of managing parks, innovations, new partnerships, or new levels of public support, awareness, and/or funding?
• What are the opportunities moving forward in a post-COVID world in terms of new audiences, partnerships, awareness, management and support of urban parks and protected areas

This conversation will also feed into the global discussion on Urban Parks, Urban Futures taking place from 16:45 (CET) on Friday 20th November at the World Urban Parks 2020 Virtual World Congress

Moderator: Dominic Regester, Program Director, Salzburg Global Seminar

Speakers: Erinda Fino, Director of the Agency For Parks and Recreation of the Municipality of Tirana and Dominic Hall, Assistant Director Operations, The Conservation Volunteers, Glasgow

This lecture was supported in part by the  Jacques Delors Lectureship endowment fund.