Comments on: Bushwick Inlet Park! Yawn.

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:19:35 +0000

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.

By: Mario

Mario — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:39:26 +0000

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??!!!)

By: Dresden

Dresden — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:24:35 +0000

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.

By: nose, spite, face

nose, spite, face — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:19:05 +0000

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.

By: Jeremy Sapienza

Jeremy Sapienza — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 16:02:33 +0000

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.

By: Casey

Casey — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:50:51 +0000

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?

By: bushwickitywack

bushwickitywack — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:01:04 +0000

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.

By: Jeremy Sapienza

Jeremy Sapienza — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:43:12 +0000

Everyone appreciates well-informed comments, even if critical. It’s a breath of fresh air around these parts.

By: the teeth

the teeth — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:31:03 +0000

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.

By: miked

miked — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 23:14:52 +0000

whoops, jeremy posted his own defense before mine of him heh