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February 7, 2010
When Parks Must Rely on Private Money
New York Times
This article points out the challenge in funding new city parks. One solution for the Brooklyn Bridge Park was to build luxury housing in the park to generate revenue. Why is it that public parks need to pay for themselves, yet the public must subsidize a private arena at the proposed Atlantic Yards project that will be a money loser?
The struggle to pay for Brooklyn Bridge Park echoes similar problems around the country in creating urban parkland in a postindustrial age when open space must often be carved, at great cost, from derelict manufacturing zones, military installations or rail yards. Governments no longer have the fiscal or political muscle to finance the projects alone, and the involvement of private donors or commercial ventures has led to public battles.
The days of grand development in the style of Frederick Law Olmsted and Robert Moses, whose parks and playgrounds were built and maintained by the government for decades, have given way to an era of private-public partnerships and pay-as-you-go.
“There is this accelerating notion that not just parks but many aspects of the public realm have to be self-financing,” said Michael Sorkin, director of the graduate program in urban design at the City College of New York. “The paradox is that it’s always amounting to giving away some public good in order to realize some other public good.”
NoLandGrab: Meanwhile, Atlantic Yards continues to eat up precious public subsidies even as its public benefits continue to evaporate.
Posted by steve at February 7, 2010 8:05 AM