Parks and recreation best practices

Parks and open space issues are somewhat of a cause célèbre in response to a blog entry by Matthew Yglesias, on parks in DC. His post, "How Many Parks Do You Need?" was in response to repetitive clamor for more open space and parks in considering how to reuse deaccessioned school buildings. His post was characterized in themail, an e-letter on DC good government (an oxymoron if I ever heard one), as saying that all pocket parks etc. should be converted to buildings.

Frankly, I have similar concerns, at least in my experience participating and commenting on plans for redeveloping the Hine Junior High School site which lies across the street from the Eastern Market Metro Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue SE and kitty corner from Eastern Market on the east side of 7th Street SE.

In response to community priorities for more open space, the RFP issued for this project called for the provision of open space, and the developers responding to the proposal dutifully plugged in such space as part of the program, to be located on the 700 block of C Street SE, into their proposal.

Within 1.5 blocks of the former Hine School, there are six public spaces (Eastern Market Metro Plaza, related park space north of Pennsylvania and east of 8th Street SE, Seward Square between 5th and 6th Streets, the North Plaza adjacent to Eastern Market, Turtle Park north of North Carolina Avenue and across the street, and the large sidewalk space adjacent to Port City Java on the east side of 7th Street at North Carolina Avenue).

For the most part, these spaces are poorly designed and/or managed. In total they add up to a fair amount of space.

It makes no sense to add even more "public and open space" to this area (I didn't mention the nearby open spaces at the library, the Old Naval Hospital, and the medians of the Pennsylvania Avenue "boulevard").

Instead, put efforts into making the extant sites better and successful.

One of the problems that results from not producing "neighborhood" plans within the regime of land use and quality of life planning in DC is that there is no coordinated approach to maintaining, enhancing, and extending the characteristics that contribute to improved quality of life within neighborhoods, both in terms of managing public and civic assets and coordinating how government agencies and other stakeholders conceptualize, manage, and deliver services.

Sure the Department of Recreation has ward coordinators and organizes services by wards, but I don't see substantive coordination and management of these spaces within the agency, especially in ways that deliver services of qualityin response to community needs rather than government agency convenience, upwards of 18 hours/day service, every day.

In April I participated in a green space planning effort in Columbia Heights, initiated by Washington Parks and People, over plans to convert an interior block alley space into some sort of green space. As part of the planning exercise, we went and looked at three other community spaces at 11th and Park Road, 11th and Monroe Street, and Park Road and New Hampshire Ave. (we could have also considered the Tubman elementary school field at 11th and Kenyon, among other nearby green places).

One of my recommendations is that the park and green spaces in Columbia Heights needed to be planned and managed and operated as one system, that there could be a walking path and wayfinding signage system created to link the spaces, etc.

Providing integrated planning and integrated plans at three or four different levels in the city:

- neighborhoods
- areas (based on the Area Elements in the Comprehensive Plan, the ten defined "areas" have fixed boundaries, unlike Wards, whose boundaries change every ten years)
- districts or quadrants
- city-wide;

ought to yield a much better system than we have currently. And it would ensure that gaps in service provision are identified and addressed.

Here are some good web resources on parks and green space planning:

- What makes Open Space work? (GreenPlan Philadelphia)
- Six Parks We Can All Learn From and Ten Principles for Creating Successful Squares which synthesizes the lessons from the six parks (Project for Public Spaces)
- Park Practices website, which includes many good case studies
- Best practices website/Minnesota Parks
- Measuring the Economic Value of a City Park System, Conservation: An Investment That Pays, the Center for City Park Excellence, and this article published in Landscape Architecture, "Shoehorning Parks Into Cities: Squeezing innovative green spaces into crowded cities requires looking for land in unexpected places," from the Trust for Public Lands
- "Too Cool (Just) for School," an article from Landscape Architecture about making public school playgrounds into assets for the entire community, not just for students during the hours when school is open
- Places Journal special issue on Parks, Volume 15, Number 3 (2003)
- REBAR San Francisco art design activism, initiators of the PARK(ing) project of temporary retaking/art installations in parking spaces promoting alternative public space community usess for urban public space
- Baltimore Parks and People, which has a variety of community programs aimed at improving neighborhoods and building the capacity of residents to participate in local affairs, while helping themselves by improving their communities
- Baltimore's Cleaner Greener Baltimore program and the greening activities of the Department of Recreation and Parks are built around community involvement and substantive participation by citizens, which is a very different approach from DC

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One thing I don't get. Some of DC's pocket parks are well taken care of and managed, while others languish. And some of DC's recreation/park centers are cesspools of trash and disorder (i.e., the area behind Taft Junior High School in Woodridge) while others are models of quality, usage, and beauty (the recreation center and park adjacent to Coolidge High School in Manor Park/Takoma DC.).

All the spaces should be great. And there should be a combination of active and passive areas, to meet the needs and interests of a variety of parks users.

Acorn Park on East-West Highway in Silver Spring, Maryland.


Pocket Park at 4th Street and Blair Road NW in Takoma