My ideas about a better way of doing things first sprang up on an exchange trip to Hannover in Germany.
We are in a real dilemma. Parks and green spaces are facing the biggest cuts in history but we have never known so much about the benefits our green spaces provide to society.
I am feeling very sorry for any parks and green spaces manager caught up in the local authority contribution to reducing the nation's debt. Some things, I fear, are not working. The snarling contempt that Birmingham's politicians seem to have for their parks suggests that little of the huge lessons...
David Cameron thinks it is fine to replace civic gardeners with volunteer gardeners.
Our coalition Government believes that if people were more community-minded and did more voluntary work, there is a great deal more that neighbourhoods could do for themselves and be less reliant on expensive public services.
My colleague Junfang Xie is researching the relationship between green infrastructure and the new urbanism or, as they are known in the UK, sustainable communities.
Since I have become disabled, I don't get to see that many parks. Knowle West Health Park in Bristol is an exception. It is the home of the South Bristol Dialysis Unit and I look out on this 4ha park three times a week.
It looks likely that very soon we will have a Conservative government.
Every two weeks, something profoundly silly happens in our neighbourhood.