Fine, here’s a short article from WNYC on New York’s newest huge open lawn that nobody will use, Bushwick Inlet Park. Everyone‘s been talking about it (despite the name, it is on the Williamsburg waterfront) and gushingly praising it. “More open space!” exclaim the do-gooders. But what use is open space nobody uses? Have you been to New York’s waterfront parks? They are isolated, boring, and crime-ridden. Lest we forget, public housing projects essentially are lavish parks with a small residential component — and they are a nightmare of human desperation.
This particular piece analyzes population and park acreage statistics to determine the alleged deficit of open space per person, which is a typical citation used by park advocates in agitating for more parks, and envy-driven activists agitating against new development, especially if it’s dense. The zoning commission has decided that 2.5 acres per 1000 people is the optimal open space. But the problem is that we are not automatons, with identical preferences for open space that can be tallied up. We don’t require a certain acreage of grass to live like we do an amount of water.
What we do need is, as Jane Jacobs advocated, lively, interesting, and safe streets. Bushwick’s streets are poorly zoned — long blocks with few commercial uses on their length where they are most needed, and even most of those close at night, leaving the street vacant. In addition, cars have far too much run of the roads — Central Avenue, for example, is a major one-way thoroughfare with few stop signs, and people are mowed down by cars every few months along its length. What Brooklyn needs are friendlier streets for playing on sidewalks, in the view of adult neighbors and where it’s easy for parents to supervise. That means traffic calming, sidewalk widening, and more permissive zoning so that all streets become mixed-use and thus safer and more entertaining — negating the “need” for endless vacant rolling hills of nothing that we supposedly crave.
The greatest open space in a city is its streets. We don’t need more gazillion-dollar green ghost towns.
Brandon July 13th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Jeremy,
I agree about the most important open space being the streets itself, but you’re pretty off in your characterizations of NYC’s waterfront parks:
“Have you been to New York’s waterfront parks? They are isolated, boring, and crime-ridden.”
I’m not sure what your agenda is exactly, but a simple stroll will show you otherwise. Gantry Plaza State Park in LIC? Hudson River Park? Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park? Brooklyn Heights Promenade? Riverside Park? Battery Park? East River Park? Battery Park City Promenade? The beaches? These are all heavily used and full of all sorts people strolling, playing sports, fishing, flying kites, reading, lounging, whatever, any time I’ve visited them.
Brandon July 13th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Oh, wait, i know what your agenda is. Thanks, Wikipedia, again.
“Jeremy Sapienza is an American political writer and thinker. He is an internet entrepreneur and, as the founder of Anti-State.com, a leading spokesman for contemporary market anarchism. He is also the main proponent of Control Decay Theory, which holds that as wealth grows, spheres of control diminish. Born in New York, Sapienza grew up in South Florida, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.”
Mario July 13th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Yeah, so don’t deal with his argument — just say that he is an evil conspirator who believes in weird things. That is a very good method of reasoning. A plus.
Jeremy Sapienza July 13th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Brandon, this somewhat incorrect Wikipedia article which is impossible for me to delete or alter tells you nothing about my “agenda,” though nobody needs much of an agenda to oppose more urban renewal schemes carried out by faraway planners. My point is that there are gobs of parkland in New York and what we need is more livable streets — and possibly more well-situated pocket parks — instead of just more giant blobs of grass.
the teeth July 13th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
But Brandon did deal with the argument. Or at least one grossly erroneous statement used to support the argument. NYC’s waterfront parks get, generally speaking, plenty of use. And they are not, generally speaking, crime ridden. Jeremy’s diagnosis of the problems facing Bushwick streets has a lot to say for it, but this has less than no bearing on the creation of a waterfront park in a completely different area. Bushwick Inlet Park may or may not be a success, and it may or may not be overpriced and over-engineered. I’m inclined to be hopeful. But either way, Jeremy’s (rather incoherent) argument against a new park in a different neighborhood has nothing to do with if or how Bushwick zoning laws or street design are poorly thought out.
Jeremy Sapienza July 13th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Bushwick Inlet Park may or may not be a success, but it will have nothing to do with satisfying the acreage-per-person guidelines. Williamsburg doesn’t seem set up for waterfront orientation, possibly leaving this park underutilized — but time will tell. My point about Bushwick streets was to say that these open spaces that we use every day are a better use of money and time for enhancement than building new parks which “may or may not be” successful.
And yes I have been to many of those parks. Often they are boring if you are not there to use a specific feature and are not safe to walk in at night when no activities are going on. Many of the parks have huge vacant swathes even during the day.
miked July 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
well I think Jeremy’s point – and a main focus of Jane Jacobs book – is that there is perhaps too much attention being spent on open green space as the solution to the perceived ills of city/high-density living. Jacobs argues that urban planners should take advantage of the density and other unique aspects of city living, and not work against them with excessive and needless green space which often creates more problems than solutions.
Who knows how this particular park will play out, but I think the point is that rather than fixing the “problem” by upping bogus statistics like the ratio of open space to 1000 human units, planners should consider taking steps to directly improve life on the street level. Which I believe is the connection Jeremy was trying to make between the park and Bushwick zoning.
Anyway, the Jane Jacobs book is a good read, she makes a pretty convincing argument anyway.
miked July 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
whoops, jeremy posted his own defense before mine of him heh
the teeth July 13th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I should know better than to continue on this path, as I have a pretty good idea where Jeremy probably stands, and little expectation of convincing him otherwise, but just for the sake of clarity:
You’re right — you can’t use acreage-per-person as some sort of magic metric to determine how ‘park-healthy’ a neighborhood is. I think you CAN look at acreage-per-person to get a rough idea of whether a neighborhood is sorely lacking in greenspace, or pretty well covered on that front. And of course the success of a given park will have little to do w/ acreage/person ratios — does anybody seriously suggest that it does? A park will succeed or fail based on how well it serves the needs of the community, to make a banal and obvious statement. B.I.P. looks like like it’s pretty well thought out.
I’ll agree that the changes you suggest on Bushwick streets are much more likely to benefit the community than creating new parks in the area, and much more cost effectively as well. I’d actually go further and say that I suspect that public life in much of Bushwick is dysfunctional enough that it’s possible a poorly designed park would decrease quality of life rather than improve it, though more likely I expect you’d see a pretty neutral effect. But this doesn’t mean that creating new parks is necessarily stupid, or a waste. Greenpoint/Williamsburg is a very different place than Bushwick, after all.
Largely separate from all this — I lived in bushwick for about four years, but moved Inwood a couple years ago — in large part because public life — and accessible greenspace — sucks in Bushwick. Voting with feet & dollars, and all that.
Jeremy Sapienza July 13th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Everyone appreciates well-informed comments, even if critical. It’s a breath of fresh air around these parts.
bushwickitywack July 13th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
I agree with Jeremy. I’m fine with my little patch of grass at Maria Hernandez Park. Changes on Bushwick’s streets would be much more valuable.
By the way, where is this Bushwick Inlet Park? Maybe I skimmed the WNYC article too quickly. Do you know cross streets? Just curious…will probably never use it.
Casey July 14th, 2009 at 10:50 am
The logic of this post is some of the most bizarre and mangled reasoning I’ve seen in awhile. Sure, Bushwick could use better streets, I don’t think many will argue with that. However, introducing this point by critiquing a new park that is not in Bushwick – what? Then, wrongly critiquing said park by calling NYC’s waterfront parks isolated and boring when in fact they are full of people and provide valuable forms of interaction that cannot be offered by simple ballparks and grass lawns style parks. But finally, the statement that “public housing projects essentially are lavish parks with a small residential component — and they are a nightmare of human desperation.” Who draws such conclusions? Let me rephrase the reasoning here:
Public housing has spaces that are open and parklike. Public housing suffers from a variety of problems which make it largely undesirable to most people. Therefore, open space is largely undesirable.
Eh?
Oi. How could anyone even get to the comments about Bushwick’s streets when they have to read through this mess in the first place?
Jeremy Sapienza July 14th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Public housing has huge parklike areas, meaning such areas in themselves are no good — and are in fact bad — if you aren’t dealing with improving our streets first. I am not at all saying BIP will be like a project. I am saying that any random blob of open space is not inherently good, and that there are better, more neighborhood-enhancing uses for our money and attention.
nose, spite, face July 14th, 2009 at 11:19 am
I’m pro-park and pro-livable streets and can’t for the life of me figure out how these two issues became an either/or. They have separate budgets, are controlled by separate city agencies, and often complement one another (as streets adjacent to, or abutting, open space tend to be more livable). I guess you could make some overarching argument about Mayor Mike, but on both of these issues he has been pretty good. Complaining about a new park for the sake of livable streets, well, something about nose, spite, and face.
Dresden July 14th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Whatever they spent money on, someone would have a problem with it. Who cares? The park isn’t being built along English Kills, okay. It’s just exhausting finding something wrong with the city all the time.
Mario July 14th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Wow. Maybe the main point is simply that resources are scarce and there are more important things to do with them than to make a park. But it is even more important for local government to stop putting obstacles in the way of communities evolving to suit changing needs — eg, revising or loosening zoning laws. This won’t bust the budget. (BTW, has anyone noticed the city sales tax is going up??!!!)
Andy July 14th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Bushwick Inlet Park hasn’t even been built yet. Aside from that, it’s nowhere near Bushwick. It’ll be on the inlet around N. 10th and Kent. And aren’t all those parks being built as zoning collateral for the high-rise condos nearby?
That being said, the state park nearby on 7th is nice albeit young with not much shade yet. I’ve gone several times since it opened (I don’t live nearby). The last time I went it could have hardly been called boring because there was a free concert with a good lineup thanks to JellyNYC.
Of course, I used to squeeze through the fence around the MTA ventshaft to get to the pier at the end of N 6th.