Green areas have been used for spending leisure time for people with various ethnic backgrounds. However, some areas attract more visitors from ethnic minorities than others. Out of research that will be discussed in this paper it became clear that urban parks are visited by both migrant and non-migrant groups equally. This in contrast to for example nature areas which are visited more by non-migrants. Therefore, urban parks can be seen as possibly favorable spaces for social interaction. It is generally claimed that social interaction can contribute to social cohesion (Maloutas and Pantelidou 2004). It is important to note that interactions are not just conversations between people; eye contact and all forms of non-verbal behaviour are considered interactions as well. Lofland (1998) concludes that different types of relations are formed in the public realm. The objective of this paper is to find out to what extent urban parks are indeed meeting places. It aims at taking a closer look at the use of urban parks and the meaning of those parks for people with various ethnic backgrounds and to see if inter-ethnic interactions do take place and whether those interactions contribute to social cohesion.Based on both quantitative (survey) as well as qualitative (observations and interviews) research in five urban parks in the Netherlands, it becomes clear that the use and meaning of urban parks of different ethnic groups has many similarities. Different ethnic groups are going to urban parks for relaxing and spending time with friends and family. Besides, although urban parks are public spaces, especially in small parks many visitors use these parks as if it are private spaces. We will argue that in urban parks inter-ethnic interactions happen and that those interactions take place more often during all different types of events. Yet our research points out that those interactions are not that important for visitors. This result essentially questions whether these interactions can really contribute to social cohesion.

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Scholars observe an increased involvement of citizens in green space governance. This paper focuses on green self-governance, in which citizens play a major role in realizing, protecting and/or managing green space. While existing research on green selfgovernance focuses mostly on specific cases, we aim to contribute towards a large overview via an inventory of 264 green self-governance practices across The Netherlands. With this, we discuss the relevance of green self-governance for nature conservation and its relationship with authorities. In our analysis, we show that green self-governance practices are very diverse: they pursue a wide variety of physical and social objectives; employ a multitude of physical and political activities; involve different actors besides citizens; mobilize different internal and external funding sources; and are active within and outside of protected areas. While green selfgovernance can contribute towards protection and management of green space and towards social values, we highlight that this contribution is mostly of a local relevance. Most practices are small scale and objectives do not always match those of authorities. Although we speak of self-governance, authorities play an important role in many practices, for example, as financial donor, landowner or regulatory authority. In this, self-governance is often not completely 'self'.