IN the last week all sorts of media outlets have played host to a variety of think pieces on Haig Park.

It’s almost as if someone were running a co-ordinated campaign.

As a long-term resident of the inner north, I’ll admit to having had a long-term relationship with the park.

I’ve staggered through it late at night drunkenly trying to stumble home from Civic, walked my dogs through it thousands of times, taken part in the wide variety of role playing games that have used it, enjoyed barbecues at the facilities and ridden through the magical section of bike path next to Sullivan’s Creek most of my whole adult life.

There are times when I’ve wished the ACT government would mow the grass more, but that is hardly a complaint unique to Haig Park.

So I’m always a little surprised to see it referred to as a dangerous, deserted space populated by low-lifes.

I must be one of the low-lifes to whom the great and the good refer.

It’s true the sections of park near the awful public housing flats can be sketchy. Everything surrounding those flats was sketchy and, thankfully, they’ll be gone soon.

The pundits promise a bucolic vision of what Haig Park could be. More paths, more signs, more barbecue areas will apparently make it an earthly paradise.

And then we get to the kicker. If only planning control of the park were lifted all these improvements would flow.

At this point the cynic starts to snicker, the snicker turns to laughs, and before you know it the miserable cynic has thrown their head back in full-throated guffaws.

Will these wondrous improvements, perhaps, be made by a nice developer? And will it be part of a larger development? One that might include slapping a few tower blocks of apartments on this nice, open, inner-city real estate?

It’s not that long ago we saw a similar push on Glebe Park.

Glebe is, no doubt, a much more salubriously appointed park. But even there we hear stories about how it is a wasted resource, ripe for something more interesting to be done with it.

The problem is that if you were to go down to Glebe Park, any time the weather is half decent, you’ll find it rather full of ordinary citizens enjoying the greenery and open spaces.

Canberra does, I’ll concede, have a lot of parks. But most of us don’t live within walking distance of the lake.

Some open, empty space to ramble along like Haig Park, where the goth girls can go and take photos of each other and the nerf gunners can shoot up imaginary zombies without troubling anyone, doesn’t seem to be harming too many people while bringing some quiet joy to the residents of the inner north.

I realise I don’t stand to make further millions by bulldozing the trees and throwing up apartment towers.

If I did maybe I’d view the park as “wasted”.

But aside from upping the mowing schedule, I’ll confess I quite like it just as it is.