Parks Are Good, Right?

By now everyone has come to accept that green is good. Unfortunately, green can also be expensive. I am speaking specifically of parks.

For some urban planners, one can never have enough parks. New urbanists like to design nieghborhoods around a park or community center that is centrally located. We have all seen the success of great parks such as Chicago's Millennium Park and Savannah's Forsyth Park and the most famous park, Central Park in New York City.

I say that there is nothing wrong with parks. I loved eating my lunch at Millennium Park in Chicago when I worked at the Art Institute, which is right across the street in the heart of the Loop. Exeter, CA has the most adorable recreational park across the street from a school and it is also flocked on all sides by pre-war homes that would make a new urbanist swoon. And I can recall many a picnic spent at the local park in my former hometown in central Wisconsin.

Parks provide greenery, vegetation, a change of scenery and a place for people to gather and relax. Parks often are the only source of nature in some sections of cities. Although I love New York City with a passion, there is very limited green space in the Big Apple. When I think of New York I think of a vibrant city, but one that is composed of miles and miles of cement and very little greenery with the exception of the trees that line the sidewalks.

Other cities, like Savannah, GA have lots of greenery. Savannah is known for their "Jewel Plan" and in the heart of the city every square has a small park at its center. Each is unique, but you can often find centuries-old oak trees strewn with the ever-present Spanish moss, myrtle, azalea bushes, etc.,

But when it comes to parks, a few problems arise. For the sake of objective arguments, let me play devil's advocate for a moment. For one, who pays for a park's upkeep? Sure, most everyone likes them, but does everyone want to pay to make sure that the park remains pristine? Park maintenance costs can sneakily be written into city budgets, but if people really knew how much it costs to keep their parks nice they would probably balk.

For those penny pushers I point out that park maintenance provides employment to people and beautifies our cities.

Another question is who has the right to the park? The obvious answer would be everyone, but at the same time does this blanket term of everyone come with restrictions? Just about everybody likes a picnic, but what about the homeless person who is slumped under the nearby tree? You and your significant other are enjoying a quiet romantic picnic in a secluded area and suddenly a slew of kids sets up shop and shows no signs of leaving. Whose park is it now?

Just like any other part of the city, parks belong to everyone, regardless of race, creed, religion, etc., The police and other law enforcement may say that the parks shouldn't serve as an outdoor sleeping quarters for the homeless and other destitute members of society, and for the safety of all parties involved I do agree. Being homeless puts a person at much higher risk for being attacked and no one should have to sleep under the stars unless they're deliberately camping.

But this points to a bigger issue, how to help the homeless?

a little slice of me part II: the more things change, the less they stay the same

Every little kid is vaguely cognisant of his or her surroundings growing up, but I have come to realize that I took true delight in seeing other cities and what made them different from where I lived even as a kid-o. And being keenly aware of this intangible "sense of space" I was deeply affected by the changes that were made in my city, be they for good or bad, even when I no longer lived there.

When I was in the third grade I went on my first trip (that I could remember) to a big city. I remember being enamoured with the city that is Minneapolis and being in awe of their skywalks, an ingenious invention in a city that is colder than it has any right to be in winter.

My passion for cities grew when I visited New York City for the first time as a high schooler when we moved out to CT. I had always wanted to visit New York and to be swept up into the hustle and bustle of the pre-holidays season was fantastic. But I loved it that much more when I visited in college on my own, for a job interview, and was able to navigate it based on its simple, and frankly intuitive, grid plan. This is coming from someone who can get lost in her own town with just two missed turns and no idea how to "just retrace her steps."

My interest in downtown revitalization, another key focus of mine, was sparked when my dad took me to the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee. I've mentioned this before ("Gentrification," Tuesday, August 12, 2008)and Milwaukee is definitely the sweet, but dowdy cousin of chic, sophisticated Chicago, but that didn't stop them from creating a Historic Third Ward, which has created its own little flair in a charming city.

Another turn of events that affected my understanding of cities was when the city of Wausau, home of the majority of my childhood, location of the the beloved Franklin Street, and the "eh" library tore out a huge section of the downtown to make a downtown park (see John Michlig's blog, "Sprawled Out: the Search for Community in the American Suburb) for a picture of what it looks like now). I won't be back there until Christmas and when I do it'll be covered in snow, so, please enjoy his pictures (and hard work).

My dad, I think, is a latent, amateur architecture buff too and certainly a lover of beautiful things and we would go "downtown" on Saturdays and have coffee and donuts and look at the old pre-war buildings that have stood the test of time- and frankly had been immune to the need for historic preservation as rarely did anyone ever want to demo a building. And if so it'd be like wanting to send grandma out into the cold world with nothing but the clothes on her back- you just don't do it 'cause why would you?!

Even for the people of Wausau who have no idea what urban planning is, this was a change and a shock. We had moved away by the time this restructuring of the downtown occurred, but upon coming back it was a sliver of what it must be like to come home to one's house having burned to the ground or waking up after a car accident and seeing that you have lost a limb. I, in no way wish to diminish the unspeakable tragedy that such circumstances are to those who have experienced them personally. But I will say that seeing the downtown looking everything and nothing like how it used to is like losing a part of yourself. It did drive home the point that every place has a "sense of place" and if you change one thing, you change everything, no matter how subtlely.

I won't even go into detail about how my beloved high school was turned into apartments/condos. It was an ingenious move on the city developers' part, but it literally meant that one can't go home, or back to school, again. I'd be less affected if I'd attended Wausau West, an ugly relic of 1970's architecture- grey masonry globbed together in a vaguely circular form with little to no windows. But I attended a beautiful pre-war building that even served as a city bomb shelter owing to the fact that the walls were three feet thick! I haven't seen the new apartment complex so I have no aesthetic judgment regarding the renovation. Suffice to say I hope that the people who live there now enjoy living in a part of history.

I attended college in Savannah, GA, which constantly harps on its "Jewel Plan" to anyone within shouting distance. And while it was aurally fatiguing to hear, it is a beautiful city that I highly recommend to anyone. Each square is unique and beautiful, ugh, like a jewel. But it was previous events, experienced much earlier, that really made me aware of a city and its impact on a person, no matter how small the change, or the person that is affected by it.