Golf courses folded into the city's green belt
Launch library · evergreen read
Scattered through the suburbs, public and private golf courses occupy a surprising amount of green space, their fairways and bunkers folded quietly into the wider network of parkland that rings much of the metropolitan area. Early planners apparently viewed golf as a reasonable use for otherwise undevelopable land, a decision that quietly preserved considerable green space.
Beyond the golfers themselves, these courses often provide an unexpected corridor for local wildlife, their open grass and scattered trees offering habitat that a purely residential street could never replicate on anything like the same scale. Native birds and small wildlife often move freely between a course and any adjoining bushland reserve, largely undisturbed by passing games.
Locals who do not play the sport still tend to value these courses for the sheer amount of green space they preserve, even if they only ever glimpse them from a passing road rather than setting foot on the grass itself. Debates occasionally surface about whether such large areas should serve a broader public purpose beyond the relatively small number who actually play.