Benepe eyes an eagle owl at the Central Park Falconry Extravaganza in 2004.
In addition to the services that parks provide, you often reference the value inherent in making cities more beau- tiful places to live. Certainly we shouldn’t overlook the role of beauty in urban life, even though it’s hard to put a specific dollar value on it. It’s important to keep advocating for parks as places of respite, as oases, as places of beauty and really good urban design. Parks encourage mental health and happiness. I often
joke that I’ve never seen a fistfight in front of a flower- bed. Flowers and plants and greenery make people slow down and relax. It’s quite clear to me that you can’t have a great park system unless it is also beautiful.
What past lessons are you bringing to your new role with The Trust for Public Land? Well, we can’t grant every city a healthy economy, a mayor who loves parks, and the ability to put literally billions of dollars into the park system. But some things we have worked on in New York, such as public-private partner- ships, are replicable elsewhere. Signature projects of The Trust for Public Land, such as Fitness Zones and transforming part-time schoolyards into full-time play- grounds—those can be done across the country. Every city has to manage stormwater; it’s not even an option. Some
cities—particularly smaller ones—may need our help to figure that out. What I bring to the table is I’ve been on the other side. I’ve been that harried public sector official who’s over- whelmed by rules and regulations and procurements and budget cuts. I can speak the language of the bureaucrat and understand how budgets are made and how mayors and city councils have to work together. And because I’ve had the benefit of working with orga- nizations like The Trust for Public Land, I can encourage city officials to be open minded about partnerships with nonprofits, corporations, and foundations.
In tough economic times, how do you make the case that parks are important? Fortunately the case mostly makes itself. Like the Staten Island bluebelt—where instead of building a huge, expen- sive stormwater capture system they built a beautiful one that looks for all the world like a natural woodland and wetland—other cities look at that and understand the ben- efits from a dollars-and-cents point of view. Or you simply compare the cost of lifetime treatment for somebody with an advanced case of diabetes to the cost of providing exer- cise programs in a park.
INSIGHT · 31
james estrin
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