In a context of hyper-diversity and social polarisation, it has been suggested that public parks constitute crucial arenas in which to safeguard deliberative democracy and foster social relations that bind loosely connected strangers. Drawing on empirical research, we offer a more circumspect and nuanced understanding of the – nonetheless vital – role that parks can play in fostering civic norms that support the capacity for living with difference. As ‘spaces apart’, parks have distinctive atmospheres that afford opportunities for convivial encounters in which ‘indifference to difference’ underpins ‘openness to otherness’. As places in which difference is rendered routine and unremarkable, the potency of parks for social cohesion derives from fleeting and unanticipated interactions and the weak ties they promote, rather than strong bonds of community that tend to solidify lines of cultural differentiation. Both by design and unintentionally, regulation and law can serve to foster or constrain the conditions that sustain conviviality.

中文翻译：

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城市公园的日常遭遇：在城市分割中打造“对他者的开放性”

在高度多样性和社会两极分化的背景下，有人提出，公园构成了维护协商民主和促进将松散联系的陌生人联系在一起的社会关系的关键场所。根据实证研究，我们对公园在培养支持差异化生活能力的公民规范方面可以发挥的作用（尽管如此重要）提供了更加谨慎和细致入微的理解。作为“隔开的空间”，公园拥有独特的氛围，为欢乐的相遇提供了机会，在这种氛围中，“对差异的冷漠”是“对差异的开放”的基础。作为使差异变得常规和不起眼的地方，公园对社会凝聚力的效力源于短暂和意想不到的互动以及它们所促进的弱联系，而不是倾向于巩固文化差异的强大社区纽带。无论是有意还是无意，法规和法律都可以促进或限制维持欢乐的条件。