Are public spaces soley for the tourists?

Having just recently visited Melbourne and spent a wonderful weekend exploring the beautiful city, I now have a great appreciation for awesome and effective public spaces. It wasnt just one experience and encounter that left me love struck with the great use of public spaces, it was the combination of being able to experience many different spaces all within one city. This experience is new to me as living in Auckland and before that Hamilton I am yet to be won over.

Photo taken by author.

As the photos illustrates I visited a great park like gardens called the Carlton Gardens, this is a similar setting to Aucklands Albert Park but on a much grander and more mature scale. But could not be compared to the Domain as its sole purpose was for leisurly enjoyment and to surround the World Heritage site within it. Many people, some tourists like us but many residents of Melbourne were basking in the gardens lush grass and open space with trees and fountains and places for people to sit and watch the busy world go by.

Maybe my mind was on holiday time but I couldn't help but notice how the aray of public space created a sort of atmosphere to the city of Melbourne. An atmosphere I do not feel when I'm in Auckland. Is this due to the way in which people look at things when on holiday compared with work mode. This leaves me wondering, do residents of a city enjoy public space as much as tourists do?

Bill Di Paola states in his blog that without tourists New York would be without public spaces as they are the 'activists of public space' using and demanding more. So maybe residents of cities are too busy with their life to slow down and take in some people watching in a public space. But maybe tourists just help with the extra push in order for local authorities to see that public space is a neccessary piece of infrastructure in a great city due to the outside money they bring into the economy. But this brings up the issue of would tourists still come to a city if it didn't have great public spaces already established?

In the city of New York there is already lots of things for toursits to see and do so maybe there has to be a draw card for tourists before they can influence infrastructure development. I think this is where Auckland and maybe New Zealand is lacking.