The 6 Ps of parks planning in DC

This blog entry is inspired by the announcement of a new interim director for the DC Dept. of Parks and Recreation, which is another example of appointing a director who doesn't have a background in parks and recreation. See "Fenty names school official parks chief : Department faces shrinking budget, contract controversy" from the Washington Post. From the DC Government press release:

As director of the Department of Parks and Recreation, Aguirre will apply more than a decade of experience coordinating individual schools’ operations to the District’s parks and recreation facilities. In his multiple executive roles, Aguirre has demonstrated commitment to providing athletic and recreational opportunities for youth. ...

As DCPS director of school operations, Aguirre provided operational support for over 120 school principals and instructional superintendents, ensuring that the central office operations were responsive to the needs of schools. Aguirre oversaw day-to-day support on staffing, facilities, finances, and logistics, as well as rapid response during emergent incidents. Aguirre’s team offered extensive support in preparation for summer school, the annual opening of schools, and the school budgeting process.

If "Piss Poor Planning Prevents Proper Performance" then the fact that DC doesn't seem to be all that concerned about hiring parks and recreation professionals to manage and direct the DC Department of Parks and Recreation shouldn't be a surprise.

None of the recent directors of the Department of Parks and Recreation have a background in parks and recreation management and planning.

I have been boning up on parks planning in preparation for writing comments to the Capital Space plan (due 12/8) as well as for my present consulting gig (writing a bike & ped plan for a section of a Maryland county, although technically I am a county government employee for the duration of the project) and it is so clear that one of the biggest reasons for failure with the parks and recreation department in DC is the dearth of parks/recreation professionals at the top of the agency.

This problem is accentuated by the failure to have a parks and recreation master plan.

In 2005, a draft parks master plan was produced but never released to the public. The Capital Space plan is pretty deficient, but it isn't intended to be a citywide parks master plan, it's more of a framework for NPS and DPR to work a little more closely together, knitted by "big ideas" but just "big ideas" not a master plan.

-- 2005 press release on master planning effort
-- 2005 website for the putative master planning effort

The reason the master plan was never released is because the leadership of the department keeps changing, and each wants to put his/her mark on it... The interesting thing about the project website is that it shows the kind of orientation that I like, focused on best practices, benchmarking against exemplary programs in other cities.

But a master plan should be about systems, facilities, and programs. Not individuals...

Clearly, parks and recreation issues aren't important to the Executive Branch (other than opportunities for construction contracts for the well connected), or they would have knowledgeable, skilled people running the dept.

If you want to get a feel for best practices parks planning, a good way to start is to read some of the articles or plans by David Barth of the firm Glatting Jackson. He has linked parks planning ideas to the City Beautiful movement and calls his version "City Revival." The primary focus is how civic assets and the public realm contribute to quality of life, and how the public realm needs to be better managed, and managed in a "park-like fashion."

Sadly, Mr. Barth has not published a book on his ideas and method, but the City of Tampa Parks Master Plan has a description of the basic framework. These concepts are influencing my work in Maryland, as well as the comments that will be submitted wrt the Capital Space plan.

There are some really neat ideas there, such as treating streets as linear parks.