Though Handsworth Park had never been forgotten by locals despairing at its state, such statements signalled a much wider awareness of Handsworth Park amid a national revival of sensibilities about the importance of green space in cities that would end decades of neglect, whose consequences in dereliction, vandalism and crime was lazily and habitually attributed to the fecklessness of the neglected. The value of parks in cities was once again acknowledged by politicians. Amid the slow burning social fragmentation of Britain's post-industrial Midlands, Handsworth Park, with other parks across the city, was being placed on a par with local housing, education, health and policing as part of what made the area a place where people might actually desire to live and work.