Community Spaces

Amid the concrete brutalism of the suburbs, there are many parks, trees and patches of greenery. Sofians are very invested in their community spaces – parks are packed on sunny days and they’ll trim trees and tend flowers, pick up scattered bits of litter, leave food out for stray cats and re-paint playgrounds in jaunty colours. After a rain shower, I once saw a burly middle-aged man - the kind of man you’d avoid on a night out in a British city centre pub – carefully picking snails up off the pavement and placing them gently on a stretch of nearby grass.