The use of green space for urban communities Green space in cities is not new. Green belts around cities are already described in the Old Testament. While these green belts are meant as more or less unspoilt nature, providing lungs for the city, most contemporary green urban spaces are of a different nature. They are human‐ made, sculptured parks, often dating back to the Victorian era. The enormous population growth of cities in the wake of the industrial revolution, created the need for public space to unwind, to play and to meet different kinds of people. Prime examples of these historical parks can be found all over, such as Central Park in New York, Hyde park in London, Tiergarten in Berlin, Les Tuileries in Paris, Vondelpark in Amsterdam, … Next to these historical parks, a last important and more activist form of contemporary green urban space is urban agriculture. Either in private allotments or through community gardening, they contribute to both food security and healthier diets. Apart from the obvious positive influence on urban ecosystems, green space has a specific use in the strengthening of urban communities. To grasp the utility of green space, it’s important to understand the thinking around urban communities, which is sketched out concisely in this contribution. The second part of this text focuses on the effects of green space on community, and the mechanisms involved. We close with a discussion on green space in the city, and its role. Community in the city The city, seen as the hallmark of modernity, in the beginning of the 20 th century was usually contrasted with the pre‐industrial, bucolic village. On a psychological level, the city and its intense atmosphere, overstimulating the senses, demand its inhabitants to take a more rational, distant way of handling social relations to maintain mental sanity (Simmel, 1905/2002). On a structural level, because of the large heterogeneity in terms of jobs, neighborhoods, and interests, interpersonal relations in an urban setting are more segmented and shallow and undermine kinship bonds (Wirth, 1938). This double malicious influence of the city on human relations and social integration, leads to anomie or normlessness, since ‘true’, bonding, social ties within the family are lost.