Wiktor: So the person who complained in the consultation about taking away space for the dog will also have his space in South Park?
Joanna: Yes. Spaces for animals are included in the park, just not everywhere, and only in places where it least harms natural life.
Zone three is already a landscape traditionally associated with human activity, but co-created by nature — the Meadows and Orchards Zone. Provided for in places where succession has stopped at the stage of ruderal meadows and thickets in the form of so-called bole, formed primarily by hawthorn and blackthorn, also blackberry, raspberry, wild cherry or rose. These are very valuable benefits for birds, which not only eat here, but above all can hide in the dense thorny bushes from predators.
In the park, in accordance with the principle of minimum cutting, the existing boles will constitute the city's Wild Orchard, which will be adjacent to a more orderly orchard — created in areas currently overgrown by ruderal meadows. In this orchard we want to introduce, above all, valuable, traditional varieties of fruit trees, disappearing from our home orchards, such as Grey and Golden Reneta, Antonovka, Costela, or Yellow Olive called Papierowka. At the same time, these are spaces for summer picnics on a flower meadow that is mowed 2-3 times a year.
sections of the park
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Wiktor: There issomething nice for everyone.
Joanna: Yes. There will also be a fourth zone, which is usually the design basis of all parks — the Recreation Zone. It's a zone where typical and key solutions designed for people from the point of view of recreational areas will be introduced — playgrounds, sports fields, benches, a bike park, i.e. everything we know from traditional parks. It is also a space of „more aesthetic” vegetation — composed in decorative beds.
In this zone, we even envisage fragments of an arborist 's collection — an overview of various, including more exotic forms and species of oaks or hornbeams. In addition to classic recreation, there will also be an educational function here. Of course, there will be sanitary and catering facilities — toilets or places where you can change and feed your child, buy coffee, ice cream, a sandwich, or rent a picnic basket.
visualizations indicating possible applied infrastucture
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Wiktor: This entire complex consisting of four zones is about seventy hectares — how long did the design work for the development of this area take?
Joanna: Surprisingly short, because the process has been staged from the beginning. However, I would also include in it the stage of creating the natural and dendrological inventory, and that's about two years. The conceptual work itself, on the other hand, took us a mere three months or so. I think it's very important, however, to include the time needed for the initial studies in the schedules of project work, because it's for them that the most time is needed.
One should always assume that a proper natural inventory will take at least a year, because it requires observation of the world of plants and animals during each season. At the same time, consultations and public surveys can be conducted. Therefore, in order to properly carry out the entire design process, it is a good idea to assume that it will take at least two years to develop a concept and another year for detailed studies.
We are still working out the details, which were at the conceptual stage when the project was handed over in December 2022. In addition, in the park, the city envisions several implementations of projects from the civic budget from several years ago. These now need to be revised to be in line with our assumptions today.
visualizations indicating possible applied infrastucture
© Public Information Bulletin — Gdansk City Hall
Wiktor: We talk about the design process, and what is the approximate time period for the creation of this park? In how many years will the whole project be completed?
Joanna: I hope that the process of creating this park will never end. This is probably the biggest change that needs to take place in the minds of designers, investors and users of green spaces.
By calling parks „objects,” we have fallen into the trap of creating something finished, which once designed, visualized, executed, preferably according to visualization, received, and will always be so, or at least we will „nurture” so that it will always look so...This is how we realize all other objects: bridges, buildings, roads, dams, reservoirs, etc.
In the project documentation, they must be described precisely, executed precisely, and exactly this is how, according to the guarantee that is always in effect, they are to look for years to come...And here is the biggest pitfall. A park is not an object.
Park and greenery is a process, not an object. It is subject to the laws of succession and is inherently changeable. Understanding this is, in my opinion, the most difficult thing. That's why the trap is precisely to think that a park can be built in a few months. Blow the whistle on success, cut the sash and consider it finished. An ecosystem has no beginning and no end — although the former is easier to try to define. The end, on the other hand, should not have an end, because it is a process.
visualizations indicating possible applied infrastucture
© Public Information Bulletin — Gdansk City Hall
Wiktor:What does this endless process consist of?
Joanna: On taking into account natural processes. Natural succession, which I have mentioned several times, involves the replacement of plant communities. One gives way to another, and the species composition is constantly changing, aiming at the combination of species found in the climax community mentioned earlier. This process of self-regulation continues unabated — adapting to changing conditions. This also translates into visuality — aesthetics.
Therefore, creating visuals for the park is inherently inappropriate. Leaving aside the variability of the seasons, which we can possibly capture in visualizations, we cannot guarantee 100 percent, either by designing or planting how many and which plants will survive the next 5 or 10 years. We don't know what the weather will bring, what animals will inhabit a given community, what birds will fly in, how much rain will fall, etc.
We can predict this, but we should assume variability by design. When designing beds, I take into account in advance that the species composition will change after two or three years, adapting to actual conditions. I have no way to predict everything. This is not building a house or decorating an interior. Here there are too many variables, impossible to predict, so the only thing we can predict is the change precisely. However, by allowing natural processes to continue, we simultaneously have a guarantee that these changes will move toward a climax community.
Healthy ecosystems have a fantastic superpower — the ability to self-regulate. That is, in simple terms, if even a degenerating factor occurs, a mechanism for its leveling appears in the ecosystem. A good example of such action is the growth of nitrophilous plants (in simple terms, „eating excess nitrogen"). They appear in ecosystems that are excessively fertile, that is, with an excess of nitrogen. This can be seen in the case of nettle or elderberry — as typical nitrophilous plants, they are most likely to grow in garbage dumps, rubble heaps, or in places of unofficial "wild toilets.” The same is true of blue-green algae blooms (here an example of excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the Gulf of Gdansk), the increase in the population of mosquito larvae in recent years (and the growing problem of disastrous water quality in reservoirs and watercourses, exacerbated by drought and increased water evaporation), etc.
One can go on listing for a long time, and we can fight these phenomena with herbicides, pesticides, mowing, etc. Instead, sometimes it is worth not bothering and „hiring” nature to help us in this process of ecosystem cleansing. Importantly, if such „cleansing” vegetation uses up all the excess, it will eventually begin to disappear, making room for more species with different requirements. It is these constant changes in ecosystems that we should begin to accept, and above all we should understand them and learn to anticipate them, to leave space for them, to take them into account in the design and maintenance of space. Otherwise we fall into a vicious cycle of sterilization, which ultimately always leads to „sepsis” and the death of the patient... Probably my educational history helps me in this kind of process thinking — I am also an economist by training. That's why I know that one of the most important principles in management is the need to evaluate, assess and make changes from it. This infinity of the management process is a key and fundamental principle of it. Therefore, it should apply all the more to the management of natural processes in green spaces. The dimension of infinity of the process, which is inherent in the ecosystem, must be taken into account by us.
visualizations indicating possible applied infrastucture
© Public Information Bulletin — City Hall of Gdansk
Wiktor: So the most important thing in nature management is change?
Joanna: Yes. I also know from the position of my experience that change management is the most difficult. We are afraid of change and the unknown. We often prefer to persist in discomfort rather than change something for the sake of maybe a better, but uncertain future.
Wiktor: If you had to summarize the most important lesson from the South Park design process that should be grasped by decision-makers, but also by the public — what would it be?
Joanna: Collaboration. We wouldn't have been able to run the project without interprofessional cooperation. Without material from specialists in urban planning, sociology of the city, nature conservation, biology.
In addition, cooperation with investors, which are large cities, is difficult. The clerical organizational structure here is very elaborate, with a high specialization of municipal units, which, in addition, do not always cooperate well with each other.
In our case, the leader of the project was the aforementioned Office of the City Architect, headed by the fantastic Professor Piotr Lorens — an experienced and respected urban planner with a great awareness of space, and at the same time a kind of substantive humility and respect for other specialists, which is not at all common among urban planners and architects. For the purposes of this project, Professor Lorens has created a kind of platform in his office for collaboration among many stakeholders.
This kind of cooperation and a good platform for understanding managed by an informed and competent leader who guides the team through the design and implementation process is the key to success in such complex projects. I'm tremendously happy to have the opportunity to participate in this.
Wiktor: Thank you for the interview.
