About Common Ground

Common Ground is a journal devoted to parks, play and open space planning in the UK. It is written from public sources and archives, drawing on planning policy, survey material and historical records to build a picture of how open space has been provided, protected and used.

What we cover

The journal home page, with recent articles and notes.
Open space planning: policy, standards and the treatment of parks and green space in the planning system.
Parks: the history and management of public parks in British towns and cities.
Open space surveys: how local authorities have assessed need and provision, from early inventories to modern audits.
Mapping: the use of maps and plans to record and analyse open space.
From PPG17 to the NPPF: the development of national planning guidance on open space, sport and recreation.
Play and sport: facilities for games, sport and informal recreation.
Children's play: playgrounds, play areas and the design of space for children.

Sources and method

Articles are compiled from publicly available material: planning documents, legislation, local authority records, newspapers and archival sources. Where historical companies are discussed, they are described in the third person and there is no connection between the journal and those businesses.

Photographs shown on the site are illustrations made for the journal. They are not archival images unless stated otherwise.

Technical notes

The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which acts as the technical party delivering these pages. The journal sets no cookies and carries no tracking of any kind. No analytics are collected and no personal data is gathered from readers.

Contact

Questions, corrections and comments are welcome. Please write to [email protected].