A rendering of the future park. (Image by Studio 36, via citydov.org.)

“Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard,” sang Coldplay.

For a group of neighbors in central Tel Aviv, who set out over a decade ago to transform an abandoned lot in their neighborhood into a park, no one ever imagined in their wildest dreams that it would be this hard. But, in the end, it was worth it.

After a stubborn lobbying campaign that lasted over a decade, and with the help of a few local celebrities and hundreds of neighborhood activists, the last empty piece of publicly-owned land in central Tel Aviv is finally set to become a public park.

It all started in 1997, when Michal Barzel-Cohen, an artist and practitioner of alternative medicine, set up an organization called “Green Not Cement,” whose first action was to organize a street party in support of the park (called “Kiryat Sefer”). With local artists, politicians and press in attendance, neighborhood activists ripped up pieces of an old parking lot in order to plant three symbolic trees. The next day, the city uprooted them.

However, Barzel-Cohen and her neighbors pressed on with their cause, putting on a series of events to raise awareness of their cause: art shows, parties, picnics, children’s activities, even a movie.

While some officials were sympathetic to their goals (and the mayor himself even promised to set the entire area aside as a park back in 2000), others were busy putting together building plans for the site. Various drafts for the area, which once served as a storage site for the police (“it was full of rusty old police cars” says Barzel) and a gas station, appeared over the years. Some contained high-rise buildings, some low-rise and some both, but all set aside land for real estate projects at the expense of the park.

The residents, in response, put together their own plan for the site (see rendering above), which would, while preserving a historic building on the site, allocate all of the remaining land (some 6.5 acres) as open green space for the public.

Last week, something unexpected happened. A city planning committee voted unanimously to approve the residents’ plan and develop the site as a park – the entire site.

Said Barzel: “I was not surprised. I think the city’s leadership realized that the residents are fed up. Public participation is the most important thing today, the residents have to be included in the processes that are changing the city. The city realizes now that the residents have great power.”

Originally published at TreeHugger.com.