by John Krinsky, Maud Simonet
2017 University of Chicago Press
It wasn’t the authors’ intended message, but one theme that becomes evident from reading “Who Cleans the Park?:” is that for decades the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) has not been allocated adequate resources. This lack of resources not only results in dirtier parks with more broken equipment, but also created serious dysfunction among employee ranks and the need to rely on private dollars and private governance to get parks cleaned and mowed. Privatization of public space has had a number of positive benefits to parks in New York City, beyond just better programmed and maintained parks, but private entities have also has proven to be somewhat unreliable partners and has raised serious issues of equity and fairness in the distribution of resources among parks in better and less well off neighborhoods.
It’s been something of a mystery to me why Mayor de Blasio, with his fervent commitment to equity in local government, hasn’t seen the Parks expense budget as central to his equity agenda and allocated to DPR increased operating resources (the Administration did provide capital dollars to smaller parks in under-served neighborhoods early on). Parks are the ultimate civic equalizer – open and providing important benefits to all. In the most recently concluded budget, there was some sign of a change in direction on the part of the Administration, with $43 million in increased parks funding (on a base operating budget of about $500 million). My rough guess is that an additional base operating budget of $200 million is required to “fully fund” Parks Department operations. By fully funded, I mean a budget with sufficient money to provide high quality maintenance and programing to every park and playground in every neighborhood in New York. And in a near $100 Billion City expense budget, there is no reason why a fully funded Parks department shouldn’t be a reasonable goal.
http://www.pps.org/article/pps-welcomes-new-ceo-philip-myrick
Downtown St. Louis has made as little progress in urban revitalization as any big city downtown I have been visiting over the last twenty-five years, despite a number of high-profile projects, like Union Station, and the continued success in a number of other St. Louis neighborhoods, like the Central West End, Grand Center, Lafayette Park and Laclede’s Landing. It is significant that the Downtown does come alive, to a certain extent, on the nights of Cardinals games. But when there is no game, both at night and during the day, the streets and sidewalks of the Downtown are dead.