Building resilient parks one ingredient at a time

By Cheri Ruane

“Stone Soup” is a European folk story in which hungry strangers, carrying nothing but a cooking pot filled with water and a stone arrive in a town and convince each of the townspeople to share a small amount of their food to make a meal that everyone enjoys. It is a lesson on the value of sharing and the potential synergy borne of collaboration. When building a resilient, public open space, the process is not that different. It often begins with one municipal department and an idea (the cooking pot). Slowly but surely, more departments, agencies, funding sources, stakeholders, and others becom