Children tend to play on pavements or in carparks

Where green areas exist, South Africa’s homeless see them as potential housing sites. With the end of apartheid and influx control laws, parks, green spaces and river banks have become the preferred locations for the homeless to erect shacks.

There are green spaces in Alexandra, but Christine Mahlalela and her children don’t visit them.

“No, I’m too scared” she says, shaking her head. “Scared of being raped, of being robbed.”

Crime keeps the law-abiding residents of Alexandra away from the open veld and river walks which in any other part of the world would be an enticing place to spend a Sunday afternoon.

A master plan to rehabilitate the Jukskei River and its tributaries is on the drawing board, but first the local authorities have to relocate hundreds of squatters who have constructed their flimsy shelters on the banks of the river.

Christine’s children play in the yard among the cars and broken bits of metal, or venture onto the pavement. Patches of grass are few and far between, and even in the school playgrounds where once there were swings and roundabouts, the homeless have erected their illegal shelters.

Nearby Christine’s workplace in a former whites-only suburb there is a lake and a big park, but she never has the time to take a stroll or relax there with her children.

There are free buses to the parks at weekends

Curitiba, Brazil

Curitiba is renowned for its parks, many of which have been created on land set aside for flood control and drainage. The city offers 55m˛ of green space per resident, which is vast compared to the 16m˛ recommended by the World Health Organisation.

The city has about 20 large parks, some jungle-like, others flat and green. All have public toilets and restaurants or coffee bars. An estimated 150,000 people visit the parks every weekend, many using free buses which run to the most popular ones.

"We always go to the parks. They are clean, and neat. Every weekend we go to a different one”, says Tatyane.

“I like the beauty of the parks, their infrastructure, their green,” she says. She also likes to cycle, making use of some 120km of cycle lanes in the city.