Lynden Miller: Beautify the Urban Landsape

Great cities have great parks, and great parks have great horticulture. One person who knows the most about this is Lynden Miller, the director of the Central Park Conservatory Garden and public garden designer of many of New York City’s other outdoor oases. Drawing on lessons learned from revitalizing the Conservatory Garden, Madison Square Park, [...]

Video: Interview with Bryant Park Horticulturist Maureen Hackett

We couldn’t grab the video, but the link to WTTW (PBS) provides a short video of Maureen Hackett talking about the comeback and operations today in New York’s Bryant Park. The attention to detail described by Hackett is good reason why when you visit the park, there so much to observe.

Goats for Park Revitalization

Revitalization starts with goats, or so it goes for Baltimore’s Druid Hill Park. The city’s Parks and People Foundation is undertaking a $10 million renovation of a decrepit mansion on the edge of the historic 745-acre park that will house an environmental learning center, the group’s main offices and trail connections to the rest of [...]

Trash Compactors in Philadelphia

GOOD magazine takes us to Philadelphia to look at the city’s new trash compactors. LOVE Park (or JFK Plaza as it is formally known) is seen in the background. more about “Trash Compactors in Philadelphia“, posted with vodpod

The Increasing Use of Fee Revenue

The New York Times just ran a story about the increasing use of fees to gain revenue by local governments, ranging from trade licenses to public parks. This issue has been around for a while. As government has devolved down to the local level, these budgets have found themselves strained in the last twenty years. [...]

Counting Users for Big Events in Parks/Beaches

Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times City Room blog has an interesting post on how to count visitors to parks, especially for well attended beaches and large public events. The case in point here is counting users of New York City public beaches. McGeehan describes how it is difficult to merely go around an [...]

More on “Solar Parks” from Kansas City

Kansas City is the City of Fountains, and some of them are now being powered by the sun through a partnership with the company Grundfos. From the Parks and Recreation Department: Two of Kansas City’s historic fountains are being removed from the electric grid and switched to solar power. The Thomas H. Swope Memorial Fountain [...]

What Size is the Average (or median) City Park?

Ever wonder, what’s the size of an average U.S. city park? Well, we have the answer. The Center for City Park Excellence maintains a database of individual parks in the largest U.S. cities — currently at a total of 10,500 parks in about the 50 largest cities. So, a pretty big sample size to make [...]

Inspecting Parks on a Yearly Basis

The San Francisco Chronicle blog City Insider points us to the city controller’s recently released annual review of city parks. San Francisco is unique in that it requires the controller to conduct an inspection and report on each and every park in the city.  Here’s a summary of what’s reported (full report in pdf here): [...]

Monuments in City Parks

MinnPost (of Minnesota) has an interesting article up about the many monuments and statues found within Minneapolis parks. Anyone interested in this subject would find it interesting and probably similar to other cities in how such items come about and have evolved. One particular snippet is that there are so many monuments and statues that [...]