Parks are public spaces – but private event organisers are muscling in

By Ian Mell, Professor in Environmental & Landscape Planning, University of Manchester

Tens of thousands of fans streamed into Manchester’s Heaton Park this summer to see Oasis return home. Over 400,000 people attended across five nights of the much-hyped reunion tour.

But the joy came at a price. For more than eight weeks, large parts of Heaton Park were fenced off and heavily secured, restricting everyday use. Families, dog-walkers and runners were displaced, and the effects rippled far beyond the park gates.

The park regularly hosts food festivals and the music festival Park Life, but Oasis was of a different scale. The concerts effectively turned much…

Read complete article

~	Home of Prominent Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Bombed

~	When courtroom fashion serves as a calculated legal strategy

~	DRC’s latest peace deal is breaking down and it isn’t the first – what’s being done wrong

~	Breast cancer: new study finds genetic risk in African women

~	South African hunters chewed the kanna plant for endurance: new study tests its effects on mouse brain chemistry

~	Supernova theory links an exploding star to global cooling and human evolution

~	Burkina Faso: Criminalization of consensual same-sex relations between adults an alarming setback undermining progressive provisions of the new Persons and Family Code

~	Can prison inmates publish books? A denied publication took this discussion to Brazil’s Supreme Court

~	Afghanistan quake: Aid teams still scrambling to reach survivors

~	Zack Polanski becomes Green party leader – what happens next?