NRPA’s three strategic pillars — conservation, health and wellness, and social equity — have been hailed both within and outside our organization as a concise, clear statement of the values and beliefs that underlie the importance of parks and recreation in today’s society. The pillars have arguably become a focus for all of parks and recreation.
But while conservation and health and wellness have been readily endorsed as part of the mission of parks and recreation, NRPA’s third pillar, social equity, has not been so easily understood. It is sometimes a difficult concept to embrace, and it is made even more so because it is not always clear where the responsibility and accountability for making decisions that promote social equity lies. We strongly believe that parks and recreation are for all people regardless of age, ability, income, ethnicity or geography. But the question remains — how do we activate this pillar as part of our mission?
Social Equity Vital to the Mission of Parks and Recreation
Advocates and leading thinkers throughout the history of the park and recreation movement ranging from Joseph Lee to Jane Jacobs have grappled with issues of social equity. Our founders fought to ensure the principles of fairness, equality and social justice always remain part of the mission of public parks and recreation.
Robert Garcia, founder of The City Project in Los Angeles and tireless advocate for social and environmental justice, characterizes the goal of social equity for parks as “equal access to the full range of values served.” He says it is not realistic to provide equal funding to every park, “but you can provide the benefits of parks across a range of alternatives that will benefit all people equitably.”
We know well the democratizing impact of public parks on our cities and communities. Freedom of expression in the public square is at the heart of American democracy. These are places where the free flow of ideas, cultures and association of people can occur between people of all ages, abilities, incomes and ethnicities. This is our birthright, and our parks have become an essential part of American culture and character. In fact, there are few better examples of how well our Union functions than public parks — parks are open to all, accessible to all and equally distributed for the benefit of all. Or are they?
Increasingly, it appears the broad social benefits that come from public parks, especially in urban metropolitan areas, are being threatened. Further, those threats are often greatest in communities where the majority of residents are poor, minorities or under-represented. Nowhere are the dynamics of these disparities playing out on a larger stage than in the Big Apple itself — New York City.
Equity Suddenly a Hot Topic
The issues of equitable park funding in New York City came to a head during the successful campaign of Bill de Blasio for mayor of New York last year. De Blasio fashioned a populist campaign narrative that included powerful imagery of what he described as a “Tale of Two Cities.” He asserted the disparities between the “haves” and the “have-nots” would only grow if actions were not taken to reverse them, and he declared that one of the actions needed to be a more equitable park system for the benefit all New Yorkers, especially those in communities with parks that did not have private funding or whose parks had poorer maintenance, dilapidated facilities and sometimes even unsafe conditions.
The Tale of Two Cities narrative struck a nerve with many New Yorkers who also saw disparities in the social fabric of the city. These sharp contrasts of how parks are funded became more apparent since the growth of privately funded public parks, such as Central Park, Prospect Park and the High Line, that are operated by nonprofit conservancies and receive the large majority of funding from private contributions.
City Councilmember Mark Levine, the chair of the Council’s Parks Committee, says “There sure is a Tale of Two Cities when it comes to parks in New York City. A very small number of parks receive a significant amount of money, and the rest of the city park system receives a very small amount of funding.” He traces the underfunding of the entire park system to budget cuts that were made beginning in the 1970s, as many others do, and notes these cuts began a pattern of chronic underfunding that persists to this day. “In the late 1960s, the parks budget was 1.5 percent of the city budget, but by the 1990s it had shrunk to .5 percent.” Levine agrees that the rebirth of parts of the park system has been spectacular, but says it is largely due to the shift to private funding.
Brad Taylor, president of the Friends of Morningside Park, a diverse 30-acre historic park in Harlem, also agrees that there is a Tale of Two Cities, especially when it comes to their neighborhood park. Morningside Park, the last park collaboratively designed by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, became the Central Park of its day around the turn of the 20th century. Although a variety of culturally and historically significant features remain today, it is challenged to present its best face to the public. “One major difference is the quality of maintenance,” says Taylor. “There just don’t seem to be the crews to do the maintenance that’s needed, and there doesn’t seem to be the staff to enforce park regulations and check permits.”
Morningside Park has been in the news frequently in recent months because of the large, seemingly unregulated weekend parties that leave its grounds strewn with trash, discarded food and alcoholic beverage containers. “Very few parks have their own maintenance,” Taylor notes. “Our maintenance comes from a district-wide crew that covers a huge area...and that crew has other responsibilities on any given day besides our park.” Taylor appreciates the high quality of maintenance in Central Park and Prospect Park, but says their success “really has to do with the economics of the neighborhoods around the parks.” He notes the all-volunteer Friends of Morningside Park has never raised more than $50,000 in a given year and says, “In a park like ours, we will never be able to raise the kind of money they do.”
Adrian Benepe, former commissioner of New York City Parks and now senior vice president and director of city park development for the Trust for Public Land, presents a contrasting view. He does not believe there is an issue with equity in New York’s parks. He says there are two kinds of parks in New York, those managed by the City and those managed by conservancies. He says the inspection ratings of parks performed by the volunteer advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks are consistently high — 88 percent, an average B+ rating. Benepe does not feel there is a pattern of neglect nor an equity crisis. “If the mayor and parks commissioner feel there is a lack of equity, then it is completely within their means to control it,” he says.
Benepe does believe there is an equity issue, but it deals more with the episodic and unplanned development of the park system. He maintains there has never been a consistent Master Plan for parks in New York City, and that most of the planning for the park system has been opportunistic in nature. He supports the infusion of private capital into the park system and says that private-sector funding can’t be taken out of its historical context. He points out that without the efforts of advocates who came forward with private donations, there never would have been a rebirth of the quality parks that New York now has. Benepe believes New York City needs to bring even more private funding into the system and that the City needs to do a better job in recognizing what is contributed by private citizens and government alike.
New York City Parks Commissioner Mitch Silver, who was recently appointed in May, has taken the helm of the Department of Parks and Recreation with a clear purpose to address social equity. “Park equity is vitally important to Mayor de Blasio and me. While we work to address concerns about equity, we will be ensuring that there is a fair distribution of resources throughout our park system. I view equity as fairness, and I want to make sure that everyone’s park experience is as rich and rewarding as possible.”
Solutions for Reducing Disparities
“The reality is that the lowest-income communities get the least amount of funding,” says Tupper Thomas, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks (NY4P), the City’s largest and most influential advocacy organization. “And parks, not just in New York City, but across the country, have been chronically underfunded for so many years that solutions are really difficult now.”
A bill introduced in 2013 in the New York state legislature by state Senator Daniel Squadron of Brooklyn became a catalyst for park equity. The bill would require the City’s wealthiest conservancies, including the Central Park Conservancy and Prospect Park Alliance, whose budgets exceeded $5 million per year, to “donate” 20 percent of their revenues to a new Neighborhood Parks Alliance that would redistribute these funds to parks in underserved communities.
The large conservancies have been skeptical of this idea to say the least. They contend it would not fix systemic problems and would only fracture the trust that they have built with their donors and lead to reduced quality of maintenance and programming in the iconic parks.
Thomas firmly believes there is a place for private contributions to public parks. She points to the history of funding for parks in New York as illustrative of why such private contributions are necessary and even essential. “Operational funding in real dollars has shrunk 50 percent since 1965, and the workforce, especially full-time employees, has been continually diminishing,” she says. “The parks were a mess in the 1970s. Central Park was a dust bowl. That’s why the conservancies were started — to help save these beloved parks, and they did.”
However, even when private monies were raised, funding levels from the City for maintenance and operations were cut even further. In New York, as in many other cities, there was a perverse logic that applied, as Taylor points out, “As soon as you gain private funding, public funding seems to disappear.”
Levine says there is an additional factor that applies in New York — a marked lack of transparency in the budget process. “We don’t know how much the City spends on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. The public needs to know how resources are distributed. It will give them confidence in the integrity of the process. We also need to know how much private funding is flowing into the parks as well.” Levine said he and a fellow councilmember have introduced two bills that would require the department to provide such information, and he applauds Mayor de Blasio and the council for adding $16.5 million in new funding for personnel, maintenance and operations to the recently approved budget. He also has hopes for the creation of a new fund that will allow private donors to contribute to parks in need citywide. “This is a beginning, and it will help people who love parks to be able to support all parks.”
Parks Commissioner Silver says he is not waiting for the results of more studies or research. “We are working to build a 21st-century park system using innovation, transparency and technology.” He says he believes that the Parks Capital budgeting process takes “far too long,” and he has directed the department to create an online tracker of capital projects so that all stakeholders can keep track of their progress.
Levine says, “We have to push back on the idea that parks are a luxury and an amenity. We have to make the case that they are an essential service for all and they contribute much to the economic and environmental health of our city.” He asserts that, “We should be describing our parks as essential infrastructure, just as we describe our subways.”
“Parks contribute to health, and data is showing that,” Levine says. “They promote social capital and community building. They are essential to public safety, environmental resilience and air quality. These are the benefits we want every New York neighborhood to have. Anyone who cares about social equity has to care about parks.”
Richard J. Dolesh is NRPA’s Vice President of Conservation and Parks.