A report out yesterday showed that people value parks almost as highly as they value local primary schools. Taking this passion as a starting point, the report goes on to suggest new ways of running green spaces that don't rely on councils doing anything sensible or efficient.  Generally, a development like that would raise the spectre of privatisation and such, but since nobody's ever going to pay to go into a park and there's no enthusiasm for flogging them off to build bijou residences, this really might be as it seems. Communities genuinely prize these spaces; so much, in fact, that they'd rather look after them with volunteer park-tender organisations than leave them to the fate of the neglected municipal pools, with crumbling tiles and floating verrucas.   Now, it's true that councils do a rubbish job of looking after common land. Parkies are such Beano relics that if you saw one you'd think it was a paedophile in disguise. If you ask me, we should take the primary-school parallel one stage further, and introduce faith-based parks, where high standards are maintained by a bunch of people busting a gut to behave well because they're all pretending to be Anglicans.   But it's still strange that parks arouse such passion, since nobody uses them. Actually, that's not strictly true - there are two days at the beginning of summer when people pile in at lunchtime and sit gingerly on the grass, convinced against the evidence of all their five senses that they're perched on dog shit and will probably get that disease that sends you blind. (Note to the irregular park user: there has been a revolution in poo-tidying - it isn't like the 80s any more.)   Otherwise, though, you can go weeks, indeed, whole seasons, without seeing anybody at all. Regular people don't use parks: alcoholics use parks, and dogs use parks, accompanied by their owners for the sole purpose of making sure they cross the road safely. And yet such niggardly effort as is expended by councils is directed exclusively at making life difficult for winos (by closing the park at dusk) and dogs (by making all the best bits no-dog areas). This is an outrage that, were I to dwell on it, would make my head explode.   Still, people are inordinately proud and protective over these spaces they never go in. I have yet to meet a single person from Sheffield who doesn't tell me that their home city has more area covered by national park than any other. The only piece of successful direct action I've ever witnessed came about when Southwark council tried to introduce the nightly locking of Warwick Gardens. (There was a sit-in of 20 people, the council relented, the local paper rejoiced, it was a mini-adventure.) A New Labour policy wonk told me, in all seriousness, that the proudest moment of his career was when he saved Peckham Rye from developers as a young councillor.   The first step in the ABC of creating a futuristic dystopia for the purposes of film or literature is always to concrete over the green areas. The second thing people who don't like Tokyo tell you about Tokyo is that it has no parks. (The first thing is that you can buy schoolgirls' knickers in vending machines. I still don't know whether that's true.) These places are not prized for their practical use or, if they are, only by a very small percentage of those who prize them. Although undeveloped land manifestly does bring benefits, you'd only have to suggest a wind farm on Hampstead Heath to discover how minor a consideration the green argument is.   Commons are cherished as symbols, and they manage, with very little effort beyond being green, to symbolise an awful lot. They remind us that, contrary to the messages sent out by relentless privatisation, certain things will never be for sale, simply because they're not for sale. The more expensive land gets, the more important a message this is. Commons reinforce a sense of community not because we meet on them and chat, but because they are jointly owned. Sure, hospitals and schools are jointly owned also, but that feels like cooperation with the practical purpose of pooling resources. With parks, we share and cooperate for no better reason than that we feel like it.   There is a lofty satisfaction to be got from the creation and protection of beauty for its own sake. Once, this made people want to build. We've lost our enthusiasm for the folly and the cathedral - now we want to un-build. Add to that the fact that parks are no longer covered in canine detritus (go on, go for a walk if you don't believe me!) and they really convey a message of peerless social importance. I've half a mind to knock down my flat and make an ornamental garden.