Joanna Rayss on South Park: Greenery is a process, not an object

Wiktor Bochenek

23 of May '23

visualization of one of the paths in the park

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A new green area is being created in Gdansk — South Park. New, although the author of the concept points out that this one has always been there. We talk to Dr. Joanna Rayss — one of the authors of the South Park concept and president of SAK — about how the South Park was created, where to start designing a green area, and when, or in fact if, this process ends at all.

Wiktor Bochenek: What was to be built on part of the South Park site? These plans changed over time.

Joanna Rayss: Yes, these plans have changed over the years. A significant part of the area was reclassified from residential development to park greenery by a decision of the city authorities. These were city lots that the city decided to use for nature functions. In addition, changes were made to the provisions for the private parcels bifurcating the two important parts of the park so as to strengthen the natural functionality in the tracts planned there. This gives them the potential to become specific ecological corridors at the park scale. Importantly, these changes were made by the Gdansk Development Office both in consultation with the current owner of the plots — the developer — and our design team.

masterplan of the South Park

Wiktor: Previously, the development for this area was handled by A2P2 studio. Did you cooperate in the "relay transfer"?

Joanna: To a certain extent — yes. Their study, as far as the process of creating the park was concerned, was an exemplary study and analysis document in the form of both basic urban planning analysis and social research. There were many field meetings, including one of a workshop nature. For us, the conclusions of the public consultations and analyses in the A2P2 final study were the basic design guideline. Simply by design, it was one of the baseline studies.

However, it was equally important to undertake analysis and natural studies. While the social dimension is virtually always taken into account in the design and implementation of many park green spaces, it usually completely dominates over natural issues. We cannot design a natural area, which is a park, without considering its ecological functionality and the conditions for its integration into the entire natural system of the city. It is not just about the physical contact with other green areas, but about structural and functional features, such as the advancement of the process of natural succession, biodiversity, the degree of degradation, local habitat and phytosociological patterns, etc.

nature analysis of the South Park site

Wiktor:How do you try to reconcile social issues with the natural context? Is it possible to combine these in a meaningful way?

Joanna: Not only is it possible, we actually have no other choice in the current climate crisis. At the same time, the public consultations emphatically showed that very often it is only in the minds of officials and planners that this is an insurmountable conflict. In our case, one of the main conclusions from conversations with residents is that the park there already exists, and people are actively using it. Residents in the consultation even asked „don't spoil it!”, „we don't want bulldozers and concrete here”.

This is understandable, since we have in Gdansk, unfortunately, some very bad examples of conducting urban investments under the „green banner”, where it actually seems, however, that it is primarily road investments, and the proverbial excavators and rollers level the entire natural diversity to the ground.

Such a tongue-in-cheek and loudest recent example is the disastrous way in which investments are being carried out around the so-called Mottawa River Outlet. The South Park is a good opportunity for the city to show that it learns from its mistakes and listens to its residents. It is also a fantastic testing ground for new approaches to the design and implementation of green spaces, as well as their management according to ecosystem functionality.

transportation analysis of the South Park site

It is the ecosystems, according to successive IPCC reports that describe climate change issues, that should be our tongue-in-cheek. Without them, this catastrophe resulting from a gradually warming planet can only end for us humans in one way. The planet and life on it will survive, because they have already survived greater cataclysms. Only we humans will not endure it. That's why we need new methods in designing and managing our cities. Participatory models that put humans at the center of the universe must slowly become a thing of the past. It's time to look for good compromises, in which we coexist with nature as part of it, rather than as a „dominator-destroyer.” This was the premise we set ourselves while working on this project.

Thus, we - the designers, together with our commissioning party - the Office of the Architect of the City of Gdansk, under the direction of Professor Piotr Lorens, who was open to such an approach — did everything we could, and are still doing, because this is not yet a finished project, to give the city a proper basis for embarking on this new, unknown path. I hope that we have been able to prepare simply good project documentation in the process.

In doing so, however, it should be remembered that our study is prepared on a conceptual scale, and the site itself is huge, currently managed by many city stakeholders, and perhaps many more should join in the process of creating and managing the park. Therefore, a lot can still happen along the way... and a lot can change... but this, in my opinion, is what the process of creation of such facilities, or rather their co-creation with nature, should be about, starting with a good inventory of what is already naturally valuable there, and only on this basis building further values.

analysis of the water resources of the South Park area

Wiktor: You said that „this park exists there”. What does that actually mean?

Joanna: It literally means that it is already there. Both visually and aesthetically, as well as in terms of nature. Today, much of the area is overgrown with either shrubby thickets or even communities of „trees” that we would colloquially call sticks or groves. Only about 1/5, 1/6 of the site is a completely degraded area overgrown with dry, exuberant grassland.

This translates into a natural-ecological dimension — these plant communities form concrete plant communities inhabited by many valuable animal species: mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects, but also fungi and other organisms valuable in nature.

As I have already mentioned, both these basic plant communities and animals have been included in the natural inventory, so that we can determine the degree of natural processes in specific spaces of the target park on its basis.

The goal is to preserve what is already valuable and to enhance the desired natural processes where needed. At the same time, this makes it possible to designate spaces where more intensive spatial changes can be allowed with the least damage to nature, also keeping in mind Danzigers and their recreational needs. Because, after all, our goal was to combine the recreational and leisure interests of people with the simultaneous existence of so-called non-humans as little as possible.

landscape analysis of the South Park area

That's why the key to zoning the park's space for us became the state of natural succession, determined by approximating the inventoried plant communities to the known substitute communities of potentially existing climax forests in the area.

Translated into less scientific language — a climax community is, in simple terms, a plant community that would have developed in a given area at this time if we had stopped our destructive activities. In the case of most areas of our country, climax communities are oak-hornbeam forests, in various varieties, depending on the region of Poland and other additional variables, such as soil, bedrock and climate.

In the case of the Southern Park, these include the so-called sub-Atlantic oak-hornbeam forest (i.e., hornbeam-oak forest), Pomeranian beech, and — as the axis of the entire park is streams, reservoirs and wetlands — riparian forests and alder forests. The study of plant communities is dealt with by a science on the borderline of biology and geography — phytosociology. It is through the use of phytosociology that I also know what plant communities appear „along the way” before nature reaches a state of equilibrium.

Such communities are called replacement communities. It is this knowledge that I used in the design of the South Park. Thanks to it, I was able to determine which plant species we can introduce in the area, which ones we absolutely cannot, how to accelerate the succession process locally, and whether a particular community has been formed due to degradation and how to reverse it.

In summary, after analyzing all the natural data in the study area, we distinguished clearly four areas. The first is an area with natural succession at the highest level of development — locally quite close to the form that could be considered climax communities in the form of Pomeranian beech and locally grądy. Importantly, there is quite well-developed litter, and numerous local animal habitats can be seen. Ultimately, we included in the project team one of the naturalists who had previously worked on the nature inventory in order to help us create solutions to support this biodiversity. This is how we designated the so-called Wild Zone — an area where nature comes first!

We make it accessible to people, but in a way that limits full, free penetration — people are supposed to feel like guests here, observing the beauty, diversity and complexity of natural processes.Thinking about this wild space, I had in my mind a safari, however, in the Northern European version — a space into which we can look, but feeling a certain intimidation, without this conviction that we are in control of nature and everything is due to us! Therefore, the basic guideline for the creation of „paths” and walking routes in the Wilderness Zone became the assumptions: „zero hardening”, no interference with litter, narrow passages, resultant routing of trails where thinning is not needed. Forms of bridges, decks and overhanging paths are preferred.

I am a fan of introducing the desired use in an unobtrusive way, treating space users as intelligent people, using knowledge of space perception. In this way, instead of building fences and putting up entanglements, we simply discourage deviation from the path by, for example, planting ferns, blackberries or raspberries (people are afraid of ticks); instead of banning the introduction of our dog pets — by using uncomfortable paving for them; instead of banning the use of the space for large groups — introducing paths by a narrow, unlit route.

If at the same time there is a choice for fulfilling these needs in other zones — comfortable and convenient — everyone will be satisfied. That is why there are three other zones in the South Park, with a recreational zone — for people and their needs included.

detail development concept

Wiktor:First of all, do no harm?

Joanna: That's exactly right! I agree, and I myself say more and more that we designers, too, should take this kind of oath, at the end of our studies. It's sad that in our country parks are „built” by cleaning up the land completely beforehand. Maybe it's a matter of our consumer culture, that we don't respect what's already there, eager for the novelty that we want to create. And this is not only in the area of landscape and nature projects. The same is true of architecture, not to mention infrastructure.

If we don't change our attitude soon, then in a dozen or more decades there will be nothing left to protect and preserve. That's why I'm all the more pleased to have the opportunity to participate in such a project as the South Park, where we have legitimacy from residents in the form of conclusions from social surveys to focus on the existing natural resource and only polish this diamond by making it adequately available!

Yes, of course, Danzigers are also ordinary people, so there are voices against the introduction of any restrictions on the penetration of the park area (here dog owners are particularly active, who — illegally — let their pets run free off the leash). There are also voices about „problems” with wild boars, which have lived there for a long time. Sadly, such voices, although occurring in the minority, are very loud and loud. Opponents of nature are able to fight it with great determination, hoping to break through with their rationale with the intensity of their proclamation. And they often succeed in doing so....

Therefore, also for this reason, it is useful to have material in the form of public consultations and representative surveys. Of course, when designing, we realize that it is impossible to please everyone. Yes you need to maximize benefits, but it is important to remember that ecosystem services are sometimes mutually exclusive, and by maximizing one, we prevent the occurrence of others. Such is the case with intensive recreation and biodiversity.

park detail development concept

Wiktor: What do the next zones of the park look like?

Joanna: Zone two is the so-called Succession Zone, where the processes of ecological succession are slightly less advanced than in the Wild Zone. However, these are already predominantly forests and groves. The forest stand here consists mainly of pioneer tree species, such as birch, poplar and maple, but you can also find an undergrowth of hornbeams oaks and even an occasional beech.

Importantly, in this zone there are also substitute communities for riparian and alder forests, which, unfortunately, due to investments related to the regulation of streams — now turned into rainwater collectors — and the construction of artificial retention reservoirs, have been completely destroyed. In places they have been „only” degraded.

Currently, near the reservoirs, in the depressions without drainage, there are mainly willow thickets, at the streams locally you can find single alders, but, for example, commonly found in similar conditions elm trees can hardly be found. The lowest plant floor, naturally the most active in the processes of self-purification of ecosystems, has been completely degraded here.

Therefore, we allow intensive human presence in this zone — the introduction of convenient pedestrian and pedestrian-bicycle routes, lighting, basic infrastructure serving pedestrian traffic. In this zone also appear subzones for recreation in high greenery, such as wild playgrounds, or the so-called Dog Park — Forest Agalites. The „Amphitheater in the Grove” has also been placed in this zone.