There’s space for parks in every city—if you know where to look.
by bonnie tsui · illustration by kate evans adapted from urban green by peter harnik
in young, expanding cities, park planners have the luxury of acting as land conservationists: find an undevel- oped piece of pasture or forest on the urban fringe, set it aside as a park, repeat. But today’s American metro can be a relentlessly paved-over place. In the “built-out” city, expanding residents’ access to green space calls for an act of transformation. Peter Harnik at The Trust for Public Land’s Center for City
Park Excellence tracks trends in urban parks across the coun- try. Where there are no longer large tracts of open space to work with, he says, cities are using the remnant space for small parks and sinuous greenways with outsized value to the communities they serve. And these opportunities can present themselves in some unexpected—even counterintui- tive—places: freeways, garbage dumps, even cemeteries. The Trust for Public Land’s Director of City Park Develop-
ment, Adrian Benepe, witnessed the results of these efforts during his tenure as head of New York City’s parks depart- ment. “It’s very exciting: we’re actually in a new golden age
of park design and creation in American cities,” he says. “It’s the kind of thing we haven’t seen since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the mid-1800s and the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.” On this modern frontier of park design, the challenge is finding ways to use what’s already there. Where land values are high and budgets tight, there can be economic advan- tages to cities adding green space without actually acquiring new property. Moreover, parks built from existing infrastruc- ture can represent the best chance of healing industrial scars on the landscape. “With these innovations, you’re adding value,” says Benepe. “A highway only has one purpose: moving cars through neighborhoods. But if you put a park over that highway, you can take a negative in a community and make it a positive.” For creative planners and advocates, the city abounds with
opportunities disguised as eyesores. There is always a place for parks—if you know where to look.
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