Occupied with Ponds: Exploring the Meaning, Bewaring the Loss for Kids and Communities of Nature's Small Spaces

Abstract

Wild nature occupies an increasingly smaller space in urban and suburban neighborhoods. The demise of urban wild I and is unfortunate because wild spaces offer a nature experience not replicated by cultivated environments. Including wild nature in our home places is essential if we wish to support environmental citizenship and the human habitat diversity needed for individual and community health and well‐being. As an environmental planner I have observed many instances of people enjoying and celebrating the small green and blue wild spaces in their midst. Unfortunately, modern planning and development practice, including ecologically‐based planning practice, are not effectively protecting or respecting wild nature at the neighbourhood scale. It appears the scale may be too intimate and individualistic for the more generalized approach used in community planning. Occupational science offers a different window through which to view small urban wildlands. Occupational science provides an humanistic interpretation that suggests small wild spaces support accessible, meaningful, nature‐based occupations rooted in our neighbourhoods. Such practical occupation‐based interpretation provides an articulation of ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ not easily accommodated or accounted for in community planning and design. Exploring the meaning and significance of small neighbourhood wetlands illustrates the richness of being occupied with ponds. The exploration invites reflection on the significance of loss as these special places are rapidly disappearing from our urban landscapes.