Promoting Natural Spaces

Parks and Gardens Agency in Ile-de-France (AEV)

A trial experiment was set up in conjunction with the Atelier International du Grand Paris in order to test their new interactive and participative cartography Mon Grand Paris and to locate within several of the Agency’s sites green spaces where people who practice certain outdoor activities were invited to take part.

This experiment was a way of developing the notion of POI (point of interest), much used in the vocabulary of tourism, to envisage in different ways what constitutes a place’s "value", beyond fixed and photogenic points: atmosphere, hills, open spaces for running, woods where shacks can be constructed out of twigs and branches. The idea was to think in terms of evolving qualities, defined according to season, use and relationships.