trail’s end
BUILDING A COMMUNITY FROM A PARK
O
ver the past year I served as a citizen mem- ber of a committee planning the renovation of the park at the end of my street. Like having my
kids in the nearby public school, helping to fix up our well- used park has given me a fresh appreciation for public life at the face-to-face level of the neighborhood. The renovation first struck me as a pretty straightfor-
ward proposition. The park’s not broken; it’s just a little too broken-in. So, I figured, we should just plan to do the obvious things—install new playground equipment, regrade the field to solve flooding problems, maybe put in a loop path—and be sure not to do anything stupid like messing up the lovely grass slope that attracts sunbathers and sledders. We’d be done in no time, right? Not so fast. The public meetings to discuss the design
offered a primer in the dynamics that give a community its inner life. Parents of older kids didn’t want the same things as parents of younger kids. No matter how sensitive the dog people and skateboarders were to the positions of non–dog people or non-skaters, they couldn’t quite accept that the facilities they wanted would make the park less pleasant for everyone else. Abutters prioritized peace and quiet, especially after dark, which tended to pit them against skaters, basketball players, and teenagers in general. During our deliberations I was repeatedly reminded how
important parks are to the very young and very old. This natural alliance of the park’s heaviest daily users wielded a potent combination of practical and moral authority that usually carried the day against all comers. Nobody wants to be seen as steamrolling preschoolers and grandparents. I was also reminded that I’m kind of intolerant in my
views about public meetings. I see them as exercises in horse-trading pluralism in which participants choose their objectives and then drive toward them, bargaining when- ever those interests come into conflict with others’. So I grew impatient when people treated the open meetings as occasions to philosophize, make off-topic suggestions
64 · LAND&PEOPLE · SPRING/SUMMER 2013
about how to improve the world, wax nostalgic, decry the downfall of all that was once good, identify nefarious con- spiracies, or indulge fantasies of personal heroism. But I came to see that my impatience was misplaced.
There was value in all that apparent digression. Longtime residents reminiscing about long-ago concerts or long-ago- removed play equipment showed me how the park figures in local routines and traditions that give shape to lives. While I was inclined in principle to dismiss overprotective parents’ and fearful abutters’ concerns, I learned to listen to speakers who could locate the point where their own excessive worries touched legitimate questions of public safety. I could even discern a purpose in rambling mono- logues about what’s wrong with people today or what some terrible kids did to the neighbors’ entryway. It was all part of the process of a community explaining to itself not only why it cared about its park but what it cared about, period. We got to the finish line eventually, agreeing on a
reasonable plan, comprehensive but not too fancy, that addressed the needs of most of the park’s many different users. Our shared objective was a satisfying landscape, an essential amenity and quality-of-life issue, especially in a nose-to-screen age that encourages us to retreat from pub- lic space and the public life it makes possible. While our elected representatives in Washington seem to be going out of their way to make it harder to identify with the ab- straction of national identity, it still feels easy and natural to belong to a neighborhood, a school district, a city. The park belongs to the community, but it’s just as true that a community takes shape on the frame of the park.
carlo rotella is director of american studies at boston college and a colum- nist for the boston globe, where this essay first appeared. his most recent book is playing in time: essays, profiles, and other true stories.
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