Bustling, beautiful parks have become the new social hubs of lockdown London

If you had told me a year ago that the best place for a little peace and quiet on a Saturday afternoon in London would likely be Oxford Street or Tottenham Court Road, I wouldn’t have believed you. (Though if you had told me that a pandemic would have confined us to our homes for over half of the year, I wouldn’t have believed that either).

There are over 3,000 parks of varying size in London, making up almost 18% of the city. With pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, shops and other people’s houses out of the question, the city has shifted and redefined its boundaries; parks have become the new social hubs of the capital.

On any usual late-November weekend, grey skies, rainy weather and a sun that feels like it sets almost immediately after it comes up would have made standing outside low on most weekend to-do lists. But, in these strange times, like moths to light, every weekend hordes of people take to parks and outdoor spaces, coffee cups or takeaway beers in hand, desperately seeking out some sort of social interaction. Hampstead Heath on a Sunday, one Twitter user reflected, is the new Oxford Street on a Saturday.

Our adoration for the great outdoors has been revitalised out of necessity: viral concentrations are more rapidly diluted outdoors; you are less likely to touch a contaminated area in a park than in a house and more likely to social distance, and the government has banned us from socialising indoors. But there may also be instinctual reasoning behind our pandemic-pull to the outdoors.

A 2018 study by Kings College, University of London, found that being outdoors, seeing trees, hearing birdsong, seeing the sky, and feeling in contact with nature were associated with higher levels of mental wellbeing. With mental health charity Mind reporting that more than half of adults and over two-thirds of young people have struggled with worsening mental health since the beginning of the pandemic, there has never been a better time to actively try and improve your mental wellbeing.

Parks and green spaces have had to take up the role usually fulfilled by gyms across the country too. On Saturday mornings you’ll, more often than not, find runners, cyclists, and devoted gym-goers lugging those complicated-looking black and yellow TRX bands to tie around trees for resistance workouts.

The pandemic seems to have acted for many as a wakeup call to the necessity of exercise. The British Medical Journal recorded that public levels of interest in exercise during April this year had reached an all-time high since the BMJ began recording them in 2004. Sport England also found that almost two-thirds of adults consider exercise to be more important than ever during the current crisis and the majority of people (65%) believe exercise is helping them with their mental health during the pandemic.

The overcrowding of parks is, of course, not ideal, given that we are trying to reduce social contact (and part of the allure of nature is its quiet tranquillity) and this is why we saw Victoria Park in Hackney briefly locked up and off limits during the first lockdown. But, according to City Monitor, approximately 21% of households in the capital do not have a garden while 44% of Londoners live within 5 minutes of a park. So, it is little surprise that the parks are so busy. Embracing the outdoors and getting fresh air regardless of the weather is something that I hope many people (myself included) continue to do when the lockdowns begin to ease next week.

But, with ONS data suggesting that 12.3% of yearly retail sales (including black Friday) happened during the Christmas season in December last year, will we once again see crowds choosing the pavement over parks as soon as the shops reopen?

Back in May, towards the end of the first lockdown, a new phenomenon of “revenge buying” emerged: it consisted of individuals spending thousands of pounds on retail after having been restricted from the shops for a few months. With the upcoming festive season sales, there’s no reason to believe that this won’t happen again.

It is likely that the pandemic has changed the structure of the city forever and getting off the tube at Oxford Circus might never be the same, bustling experience again (for better or for worse). But the importance of protecting and expanding our green and outdoor spaces has never been clearer. Even if you are thankful for little else this year, at least take a minute during the last weekend of lockdown to appreciate the great British outdoors.