Despite being a bustling metropolis, London is blessed with amazing green spaces of all shapes and sizes. Whether a park or common, playing field or a golf course, an allotment or a civic square, open spaces are important to all of London’s residents. They provide space for relaxation and recreation, form a wide biodiversity network, help to mitigate climate change and even boost local economies.

A view over London in Greenwich Park, just one of the many open spaces where Londoners can go to escape the hustle and bustle of city life (Mark Ramsay, CC BY 2.0)

GiGL maintains the most comprehensive record of open spaces in London, which includes mapped boundaries of open space sites as well as information on facilities, ownership, whether the site is publicly accessible, and details of any designations, for example if it is a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) or a Local Nature Reserve.

As it is so comprehensive, GiGL’s Open Space dataset includes sites that are not accessible to the public, as well as spaces that while integral to London’s green infrastructure, are unlikely to attract people to visit, for example small areas of landscaping around housing. Therefore, as part of GiGL’s commitment to provide a benefit to our community, we created the Spaces to Visit dataset in April 2020. This is a subset of GiGL’s Open Space dataset that provides a source of information on the locations of open spaces in Greater London that are available to the public as destinations for leisure, activities and community engagement. It also includes green corridors that provide opportunities for walking and cycling.

London is home to countless open spaces open to the public, like St Botolph without Bishopsgate Churchyard pictured here in the City of London (Corporation of London)

Spaces to Visit is available to the wider community as a free download from the London Datastore and to GiGL partners as part of their SLA agreement. Anyone can also find out more about their local open spaces using GiGL’s discover-London map.

When the Spaces to Visit dataset was first released, there were concerns that it could be seen as encouraging people to visit open spaces at a time when many local authorities were struggling with the demands on local parks during the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, at the request of the Greater London Authority (GLA), the open version of this dataset was initially called ‘GiGL open space data sub-set (beta version)’. GiGL now has permission to release the dataset as Spaces to Visit, and that, along with some enhancements to the Open Space dataset, has led us to review and revise the criteria used to select sites.

Sites that go into the Spaces to Visit dataset are selected using information on a site’s primary use and public accessibility, as shown in the table below. The first release of Spaces to Visit included only sites that were open to the public all day, every day. This was because, at that time, our records for sites with restricted access did not distinguish between different types of restriction. This meant that, for example, spaces that can only be accessed by people who pay an annual membership were classified in the same category as sites that are only closed on Sundays.

We have taken advantage of a GiGL project that increased the level of detail about the accessibility of sites in the Open Space database to improve Spaces to Visit. This recent project defined and coded restricted access sub-categories, and that enabled us to include sites in Spaces to Visit that, while not always open to the public, may still be interesting spaces to visit. We have also included sites, such as Coram Fields, that adults can only visit when accompanied by a child.

GiGL Spaces to Visit site selection criteria
Only adults who are accompanied by a child can visit Corams Fields in Camden. This is just one of the sites now included in Spaces to Visit after the most recent updates that took advantage of GiGL’s recent project to improve the access information we hold (Benjamin Ragheb, CC BY-SA 2.0)

GiGL SLA partners will receive the first version of the revised Spaces to Visit dataset with their January data exchange, with the dataset updated quarterly. As well as the site boundaries in GIS format, SLA partners receive the full set of attributes. The open version of the dataset, which includes fewer attributes, will be released at the same time and also updated quarterly.

The Spaces to Visit dataset provides anyone who is interested in the Capital’s open spaces with free access to information on sites that are accessible to the public. There are a myriad of ways this can be used by Londoners, from community groups identifying open spaces in their area to developers interested in developing apps and websites to engage the public with London’s greenspaces.

As many of the opening hours currently in place in London’s open spaces are changing in response to coronavirus restrictions, we urge anyone visiting a site in the Spaces to Visit dataset to check with the local authority or the space’s own website to confirm opening hours before visiting.

If you would like detailed information about Spaces to Visit, the Spaces to Visit review, or developments to GiGL’s Open Space dataset, please contact our database officer.

If you would like to enquire about an SLA agreement, please contact GiGL’s Partnership Team.

If you are a community group interested in accessing more detailed data than are available through the London Datastore, please contact GiGL’s Communities Team.

London’s spaces can change fast, so GiGL is always verifying, validating and updating the Open Space dataset. If you discover any errors in the data please contact our database officer.