Volunteer and Governmental Influences on Urban Green Spaces

Ren Poulton Kamakura presents research on small public gardens in Vancouver that asks how interactions between volunteer stewards and city staff shape green-space stewardship and plant functional diversity. Combining a policy-arrangements approach with interviews, surveys, focus groups and plant field sampling, preliminary results link volunteer stewardship to higher forb and overall plant species diversity, with no clear differences in invasive cover or total vegetation, and stewardship rates that do not simply follow income gradients.