New York is a city of parks.

I know what you're thinking: you live on a street that is more grey and brown than green and you're wondering where all of these parks are. Good question!

Amazingly, New York has over 1,700 parks, covering more than 28,000 acres of land. The problem is, many of these "parks" are small asphalt lots, sitting areas and concrete playgrounds. And where you live makes a difference: Staten Island is covered in green, while the South Bronx is starving for a little bit of parkland.

Wisely, the City has decided to tackle this problem as part of the Planyc2030 effort.

In his Earth Day "Greener, Greater New York" speech, Mayor Bloomberg said that the city will soon begin a comprehensive effort to complete underdeveloped destination parks, and to create a new (or enhance an existing) public plaza in every community. In addition, work will continue to green traffic islands and triangles through the Greenstreets program. Recreational opportunites will be enhanced by installing new "field turf" on existing asphalt fields, adding lights to existing fields throughout the city and opening school yards as public playgrounds.

There are also proposals to speed up the clean-up of the hundreds of contaminated brownfield sites that lay fallow throughout the city, and perhaps develop some of this reclaimed land as parks.

Finally, the plan calls for one million trees to be planted along streets and parking lots and in vacant lots throughout the city, and for 2,000 acres of parkland to be reforested -- steps that will help to cool the city in the summer, reduce erosion and stormwater runoff, and help clean the air.

Since the City's goal is to ensure that every New Yorker lives within a 10 minute walk of a park, these are all very good ideas, although not particularly groundbreaking. What's missing? Well, for years the City has worked to add new parks while simulataneously cutting (or slowly growing) the maintenance and operations budget of the Department of Parks and Recreation. That's right: more parks,but less people and equipment to care for them.

Hopefully, these more mundane, less sexy details will be developed in the coming months of discussion and debate of PlaNYC. After all, an open space plan that doesn't encompass good maintenance or proper funding can hardly be considered "sustainable." As the city's budget gets bigger but tighter, fresh ideas will be needed to help care for all of these new parks:

• Is the answer public-private partnerships?
• Do we need Park Improvement Districts to help capture revenue from nearby businesses and residents?
• How about capturing the concession revenue generated in parks (which totals millions of dollars every year) and using that to pay for park maintenance?
• Does a dedicated park tax make sense?
• Or does the city simply need to make the Department of Parks and Recreation a bigger priority in the annual budget?

This is very fascinating. I'd be curious to learn about how parks have been planned and implemented in the two areas you describe (as well as others), South Bronx and Staten Island. While I don't have experience first-hand, I think it's highly likely that with different urban fabrics in each location, the development mechanisms, motivation, and choice of amenities planned and required have also been different. I'd wager that parks in Staten Island, if having in general more 'green,' exist the way they are today for a reason, and likewise for South Bronx. Maybe the city could investigate the processes by which good park planning has taken place, and consider what holes have been missing in the park planning and implementation processes elsewhere?

The city and residents should also took back to the work of William H. Whyte in the 1970s where he conducted an excellent study of public spaces in Manhattan. I think a Whyte-style analysis of New York's parks would behoove the city and residents, and provide insight into not only the condition of the parks, and their contexts, but a deeper look into what parks work and what don't. Planners could make use of the project's results when considering revisions to planning code that will spur better, greener park-making. Simply adding more trees and green shrubbery, I feel, won't cut it, the parks have to be designed well.

Detailed in his book "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces," and a video by the same name, Whyte's observer appoach looked at how people interacted with public spaces, what spaces people like and didn't like, and why. His study eventually led to a revision in the zoning code designed to foster better public spaces that actually work. Many of the public spaces he examined had been built underneith or adjacent to skyscrapers; this was due to a planning code that allowed builders to build more floors if they donated ground-floor space to a public use plaza. Whyte's writings and video also examine public spaces in other cities. His findings provide great insight.

Posted by: matthew waxman on April 25, 2007 2:52 PM

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