Urban green spaces are commons that include a wide variety of vegetated public spaces. They provide diverse benefits such as air quality improvement, climate regulation and recreation. Because of these benefits several governments of Latin American cities have generated policies designed to develop new green spaces. In this research, I explore how green spaces of Santiago (Chile) varies in terms of physical design, maintenance costs and resilience to climate variability and funding vulnerability. Finally, it is performed a reflection about how participatory design and community involving can reduce maintenance costs and increase resilience. A selection of green spaces of Santiago was analysed. They can be synthetized in three groups: 1) local green spaces constructed by local governments without public consultation, 2) local green spaces developed by a NGO involving the community in design and construction processes and 3) urban parks developed by the regional government without public consultation. Doing fieldwork, remote sensing and documentary analyses, it was described the accessibility, the vegetation composition, the equipment (e.g. irrigation system, playground, benches), the types of pavements, the maintenance cost and the resilience to climate and funding variability. This assessment puts in evidence the importance of a good design, based in knowledge provided by scientific and technical knowledge and in knowledge provided by local communities. A resilient design implies low maintenance costs, which helped by an adaptive management can increase the resistance to external variabilities, helping to provide more and better benefits to people living closed by and to whose that visit them. The outcome of this research is to stimulate to designers associated to regional or local government to get inspired by good practices to increase the resilience of green spaces, to reduce the costs associated and to increase the environmental quality and quality of life of citizens