The demand for green spaces in highly urbanised, metropolitan cities is well documented. However, adjacent to or surrounding these densely populated urban centres are extensive areas of newer suburbs, where land use and public space demands differ from those found in large urban cities. Though dependent on the age of a suburb and its associated societal changes, the demands made upon suburban green spaces are changing. However, little research has focused on ageing suburban park systems, which today may be managed by multiple administrative entities. The development of a master plan for the seventy-year-old network of Bergen County parks, located in north-eastern New Jersey, approximately 30 km outside of New York City, is a case study that illustrates this environmental planning challenge. Competing user interests can be traced to conflicting demands and expectations for open space amenities, highlighting the difficulty of providing an equal voice to all park user populations. A primary goal of this user-driven public process was to foster mutual respect and understanding between relevant groups, creating the possibility that these groups will become stewards of the county park system over the long-term under subsequently elected administrations. Having these public champions will be critical to successfully implementing and sustaining the proposed parks master plan concept. The following discussion describes a community engagement process that surfaced and negotiated user conflicts linked to New Jersey’s specific administrative and political environment.

The continuing loss of urban wetlands due to an expanding human population and urban development pressures makes restoration or creation of urban wetlands a high priority. However, urban wetland restorations are particularly challenging due to altered hydrologic patterns, a high proportion of impervious surface and stormwater runoff, degraded urban soils, historic contamination, and competitive pressure from non-native species. Urban wetland projects must also consider human-desired socio-economic benefits. We argue that using current wetland restoration approaches and existing regulatory “success” criteria, such as meeting restoration targets for vegetation structure based on reference sites in non-urban locations, will result in “failed” urban restorations. Using three wetland Case Studies in highly urbanized locations, we describe geophysical tools, stormwater management methods, and design approaches useful in addressing urban challenges and in supporting “successful” urban rehabilitation outcomes. We suggest that in human-dominated landscapes, the current paradigm of “restoration” to a previous state must shift to a paradigm of “rehabilitation”, which prioritizes wetland functions and values rather than vegetation structure in order to provide increased ecological benefits and much needed urban open space amenities.

The majority of humans now live in cities where access to usable open space is often limited, causing a reexamination of current practices and values related to reuse of available urban lands. Closed landfills offer an unprecedented opportunity to convert large underutilized land into usable urban open space, as well as habitat for multiple species. However, existing landfill regulations and closure practices do not allow optimal ecological restoration designs for these underutilized properties to be realized, because current regulations focus on methods that protect required caps and prevent water infiltration. Through the exploration of two design case studies, the authors illustrate the opportunities to increase habitat diversity on closed landfills and to more closely approximate a natural topographic/vegetation interaction. Although initially a more costly restoration, unique restoration design elements enhance both long-term environmental and socio-economic values associated with the reuse of closed urban landfills, which are currently underutilized.