These obvious truths have implications for public health, but recognizing the problem does not automatically offer simple solutions for mayors, city councils, park directors, or urban planners. Creating new parks in a crowded, built-out city is a slow, arduous, and often expensive task. It can be done—it is being done in almost every city in the country—but it is not the only way to bring people and green space together. Much can be done outside the park fence, in the neighborhood, where the normal processes of urban construction, rehabilitation, and change occur at a faster pace.

Sometimes easiest to fix is the problem of accessibility. Some parks are underused simply because they are too hard to get to. Users may be blocked by steps, fences, walls, cliffs, railroad tracks, highways, waterways, or an unbroachable row of private residences. Some parks require a long jaunt to the other side just to gain entry. Others are literally visible from a home but unreachable by children without a chaperoned car ride.

Park access might be improved by constructing a ramp or pedestrian bridge in a key location, or by installing a traffic signal on a busy road. While such fixes might cost from $50,000 to several million dollars, that is a small price compared with what is routinely spent on highways and parking lots and would be more than offset by savings in health costs resulting from more frequent park use.

People are more likely to use parks that are close to places where they spend time: restaurants, shopping districts, libraries, gyms, and other meeting areas. In some cases parks can be sited close to such destinations. In other instances businesses and attractions can be allowed or encouraged to locate near existing parks. A mistaken Victorian sensibility sometimes holds that the “purity” of parks should not intersect with the “untidiness” of commercial areas. In fact, people like that proximity. They welcome the opportunity to buy picnic food or an ice cream cone to eat on a nearby park lawn or bench—and if that sojourn can be combined with a brisk walk, jog, or basketball game, so much the better.

Or, a large downtown destination park might be considered for a bike station, like the one offered at Chicago’s Millennium Park. There, for a membership fee, park users have access to one of 300 secure bike spaces along with lockers, showers, and a repair shop. For tourists, there are rental bikes. Completed in 2004 for $3.2 million, the facility today is so popular that it has a waiting list.

Best of all is the provision of plenty of housing near parks. This is an old concept with a new name: park-oriented development. From Lincoln Park in Chicago to Riverside Park in New York to Lake Harriet in Minneapolis, the parks surrounded by lots of people are the ones that can provide the greatest total amount of health benefits. But often U.S. cities are zoned so as to prevent that outcome. Some communities are averse to the look of taller buildings around parks; others may even think that the fewer people in the park, the better.

If denser development is not possible, park use can also be increased by improving accessibility through walking, bicycling, and public transit. (Automobile access is less desirable because it requires acres of parking and eliminates the health benefit of walking and cycling.) Ample park entrances, great sidewalks, and bike lanes on connecting streets; pedestrian-friendly perimeter roads with plenty of traffic signals and crosswalks; and easy grades and smooth trails for elderly and wheelchair-bound visitors: all these contribute to great access. In large parks, high-use destinations such as playgrounds, basketball courts, and swimming pools should be sited near the edge of the park, not deep in the interior.

"Catchment Circle." The area of a circle grows by the square of the radius. If a park is easy to reach by bicycle, 16 times as many people can get to it in the same amount of time it takes to walk from a mile away. Illustration: Helene Sherlock.

Bicycle access extends the “reach” of a park 16-fold over walking. This is because cycling is about four times faster than walking, and the “catchment circle”—the surrounding area from which park users can be drawn—increases by the square of the distance from the park (see diagram on right). Thus, improving bicycle access is an important way to get more people to the park (not to mention the health benefit from pedaling there and back).

Good public transit improves park access even more. It is no coincidence that eight of the ten most heavily used parks in American cities offer subway or light-rail access within one-quarter mile, and all of them have bus service that comes even closer. In New York City major parks almost invariably have subway service. Other parks well served by subway and rail include Boston Common, Forest Park in St. Louis, Millennium and Grant parks in Chicago, and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

As new transit lines are built, it’s sometimes possible to align them with parks. Seattle’s new streetcar line terminates at 12-acre South Lake Union Park. The city is working to increase housing and commercial density in this near-downtown location, and the alignment of park and transit is particularly helpful in reaching the goal. “Especially at lunchtime,” says former Seattle Parks Foundation Director Karen Daubert, “you can see the crowds walking off the streetcar right into South Lake Union Park. It’s the perfect connection to this waterfront refuge.”

For larger parks, internal transit can also promote access. At 130-acre Washington Park in Portland, Oregon—home to the popular Rose and Japanese gardens—special Tri-Met buses not only connect to the nearest light-rail station but also make eight stops inside the park. The service is inexpensive (or free with a transfer), runs every 15 minutes, and is aggressively advertised by the park department, Tri-Met‚ and event promoters. The route gets about 500 riders per day on weekends and 420 on weekdays. From a health perspective, taking transit results in far more walking than accessing the park in a private automobile.

Here are a few examples of the ideas presented above:

Piedmont Park, Atlanta. Health-promoting park systems appreciate density. Credit: Ashley Szczepanski.

In recent years, Atlanta’s Piedmont Park has shown a marked growth in users. There are several reasons for this, including policies that have reduced auto traffic in the park, the rehabilitation of facilities, better signage‚ and additional programming. But also significant is the fact that more people now live in areas bordering or near the park. Unlike many other urban places, the Piedmont Park neighborhood is densifying, and the park itself is serving as a significant lure for development.

Between 2000 and 2009 alone, the City of Atlanta approved building permits for 16 new multi-unit rental and condominium apartment buildings within a half-mile of Piedmont Park, and the neighborhood gained nearly 100 single-family homes. All told, the park neighborhood gained 1,880 units, or about 4,500 people, over the decade. These people are the heaviest users of the park facilities. They compound their health benefit by often walking or running to the park rather than driving there.

“Piedmont Park is one of the single biggest assets we have in the neighborhood,” said Ginny Kennedy, director of urban design for the Midtown Alliance. “In everything we do, we encourage and try to reinforce access and visibility to the park.”

Perhaps most significant, the Midtown Alliance—whose goal is to make midtown Atlanta an “exceptional place to live, work, learn, shop, and play”—spearheaded the area’s 2001 rezoning. The changes enabled many more people to live and work near Piedmont Park and benefit from its health-promoting effects.

Midtown Greenway, Minneapolis. Health-promoting park systems locate parks and trails so as to benefit from other uses. Credit: Freewheel Bike Center.

Since its opening in 2000, Minneapolis’s Midtown Greenway has quickly become one of the best-used bike routes in the country, largely because it combines a park-like experience with true functionality. The mostly below-grade former rail line is quiet to ride, bordered with green, and unbroken by street intersections. Yet its almost six-mile length parallels a major commercial street only one block away, offering easy access to grocery and hardware stores, restaurants, video rentals‚ and pharmacies. “Fast, safe, and pleasant” is how Midtown Greenway Coalition Director Tim Springer describes the linear park—but it is also convenient. Instead of returning home from a bike ride and climbing into the car for errands, many Midtown Greenway users are able to multitask. The greenway leads them to their needs, and their needs lead them to the greenway.

The city has consciously helped. When a massive old Sears warehouse was converted into the Midtown Global Market, officials built a connection from the greenway and also landed a federal loan to create the Freewheel Bike Center‚ which provides storage, repair, rentals‚ and sales. Next door is a coffee shop. Nearby, the new Sheraton hotel has an outdoor patio overlooking the trail (and directs guests to rent bikes from Freewheel). The greenway also intersects with transit along the Hiawatha light-rail line, giving some Minneapolitans a car-free commute with morning and evening exercise to boot. All in all, the collocation of the park with diverse destinations has made this not only a greenway, but a “healthway.”

Want to know more ways urban park systems can best promote health and wellness?  Read this publication from The Trust for Public Land.

In every city there are hundreds of acres of streets and roadways potentially available as park and recreational facilities. While parks make up about 20 percent of New York City’s total area, streets make up about 30 percent. In Chicago, 26 percent of the land is devoted to streets compared to only 8 percent for parks. Converting some street capacity for recreational activity–either full-time or part-time–is a underrealized opportunity.

Atlanta closed three miles of roads in Piedmont Park in 1983. The park now attracts more than four million visitors a year. Credit: Piedmont Park Conservancy.

Wresting space away from automobiles is never easy, but if any opportunities constitute “low-hanging fruit” they are the hundreds of miles of roads within city parks. Naturally, all large parks need some streets for access to facilities as well as to allow motorists to get from one side to the other, but most city parks have a surfeit of auto corridors. The National Mall in Washington, D.C., formerly had four parallel drives running for about a mile between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. Not only was the green Mall thoroughly intersected every few dozen yards by asphalt, but the drives themselves were permanently clogged with tourists (and government workers) looking for parking spaces. In 1976, just in time for the national bicentennial celebration, Assistant Interior Secretary Nathaniel Reed decided to abolish the two central roads and replace them with pebble-covered walkways reminiscent of those in Paris parks. The aggregate amount of space–about 4 acres–was relatively small, but the impact on park usability, ambience, safety, and air quality was monumental. Similarly, in Atlanta, following a raft of crime and nuisance issues that were negatively affecting Piedmont Park, Parks Commissioner Ted Mastroianni and Mayor Maynard Jackson announced test weekend road closures. Despite protests, the results led to dramatic increases in other uses of the park, such as running, walking, and cycling, and, in 1983 the closures were made total and permanent. (Piedmont Park is today the most car-free major city park in the United States.)

Other examples abound (see below table). San Francisco’s longtime Sunday closure of 2 miles of John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park was extended in 2007 to Saturdays as well. The program, which makes available one of the only hard, flat, safe areas for children in the entire hilly city, according to the San Francisco Bike Coalition, effectively added about 12 acres of parkland without any acquisition or construction costs. Park usage during car-free hours is about double that of when cars are around. Even cities that are thoroughly oriented to cars are finding an enthusiastic constituent response to park road closures. Kansas City, Missouri, bans automobiles on beautiful Cliff Drive within Kessler Park from Friday noon until Monday morning during the summer. San Antonio permanently closed Brackenridge Park’s Wilderness Road and Parfun Way in 2004. And Los Angeles has permanently closed 10 miles of Via del Valle and Mt. Hollywood Drive in Griffith Park to protect wildlife, reduce the risk of fire, and provide a safe, quiet venue for walkers, runners, and cyclists.

It’s not just large parks. Many small parks which were disfigured by roads can be re-greened, too. New York City’s Washington Square, famous as a Greenwich Village movie set and also for street theater, rallies, and as a de facto quad for New York University, had been bisected by Fifth Avenue until 1964. Ironically, a proposal to expand that avenue into a freeway led to the uproar that made the park entirely car-free–and a much more successful space. In Washington, D.C., Thomas Circle had gradually been sliced down in size almost to the diameter of the statue of General George Henry Thomas and his horse, with traffic consuming the entire area. In 2007 the National Park Service and the District of Columbia reinstituted the original circle and rebuilt pedestrian walkways to allow people to use it. Earlier, a similar project re-unified 2.5-acre Logan Circle and helped ignite a renewal of its neighborhood.

In 2007, Houston got itself a park addition by trading away a street. It happened in Hidalgo Park, a venerable 12-acre greenspace in the city’s hard-bitten East End, near the Turning Basin on Buffalo Bayou where Houston started. When a small sliver between the park and the bayou came up for sale, the city secured federal funds to buy it through an obscure federal program called Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation. The sliver had two drawbacks: It was separated from Hildago Park by a street, plus there is a federal requirement that coastal funds be matched one-to-one by non-federal dollars. Park Director Joe Turner took a tour of the site and had a “Eureka!” moment–why not close the street, have it transferred from the Public Works Department to Parks and Recreation, and use its land value as the local match for the federal grant. The politics and geography happened to be perfect: There were no houses on the street, it had no through access, and the one industrial user at the far end had another plant entrance it could use. And since no one before Joe Turner had ever offered to use the value of a street as a local match, the federal bureaucrats were surprised enough to say yes. (They’ve since rethought it and forbidden the maneuver, but the Houston handshake was grandfathered in.) Today Hidalgo Park is a much-improved 14 acres with unbroken access to the channel and views of the stupendous ships coming up to the Turning Basin.

Closing and beautifying streets that are not in parks is more difficult. Many cities, including Boston, Santa Monica, and New Orleans have turned one of their key downtown streets into a car-free zone, although in nearly all cases the motivation is less for casual, free recreation and clean air than for upscale shopping and dining. Portland, Oregon, however, did pull off a famous and extraordinarily successful “road-to-park” conversion. It involved the 1974 elimination of four-lane Harbor Drive, an expressway along the Willamette River that had been rendered redundant by a new interstate highway. Most cities would have given in to the strenuous remonstrances of their traffic engineers and kept highways along both sides of their river, but under the leadership of Mayor (later Governor) Tom McCall the old roadway was dug up and replaced by 37-acre Waterfront Park. The park opened in 1978, exactly three-quarters of a century after the concept was first proposed by planner and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., in his plan for Portland. Built for about $8.5 million, the park in its very first year was credited with stimulating an estimated $385 million in retail, office, hotel, and residential development in the vicinity. Later named after the visionary governor, Tom McCall Waterfront Park has since become Portland’s focal point for all kinds of activities and festivals.

Baltimore's 14-mile Gwynns Falls Trail used about six miles of underused roads along a scenic stream valley that are now popular with bikers, runners and other non-car users. Credit: Maria Carola.

Some cities, including Baltimore, El Paso, Chicago, New York, and Miami, have recently begun experimenting with the idea of once-a-summer or once-a-month road closures on regular city streets, following the example of the “ciclovias” that have become immensely popular in Bogota, Colombia; Quito, Ecuador; and several other Latin American cities. Called such things as “Summer Streets,” “Scenic Sundays,” “Walk and Roll,” and “Bike Days Miami,” the events often take place on cities’ most park-like streets (Park Avenue in New York, Scenic Drive in El Paso) and bring forth tens of thousands of people in an electrifying, community atmosphere in a domain normally dominated by cars. (The events are often initially organized and promoted by bicyclists but soon become so congested that they evolve into street festivals.)

Cities can permanently convert streets into park-like “Woonerfs,” a Dutch concept for neighborhood ways where pedestrians, bicyclists, and children are given priority over cars. (The name translates to “Home Zone,” which is what it is called in Great Britain.) While the concept has yet to fully establish itself in the United States, variants have surfaced. On downtown Asheville, North Carolina’s, Wall Street, the city installed brick pavers, bollards, benches, and lights so intertwined that they become an obstacle course that greatly reduces automobile speeds. Seattle is doing similar traffic calming in certain neighborhoods and is also adding numerous pervious areas and water-capturing features to add ecological benefits to these “street-parks.”

That being the case, there may not be a better way to combine leisure with learning then the Hudson River Greenway Bike Tour that the Commissioner will lead, and which promises to be a highlight for a lucky few early registrants for the International Urban Parks Conference, Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, being held from July 14 to 17 in New York City.

The three-hour tour on the afternoon of Sunday July 15 will traverse the longest continuous car-free bicycle and pedestrian path in New York City: the Hudson River Greenway, an uninterrupted 11-mile route between Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan, and north beyond the George Washington Bridge. The trail passes through Hudson River Park, Riverside Park South, Riverside Park and Fort Washington Park.

New York City’s historical legacy as a pioneer of urban park innovation in America will be both on visual display — and on display in the accompanying ruminations of the Commissioner. Bicycles and helmets will be provided and the stunningly scenic and informative ride will be at a relaxed pace with, Benepe promises, about a half dozen or so stops. “Hopefully the weather will cooperate, and there’s usually a breeze along the river and many places to stop, talk, get water and get a bite along the way.”

Sunblock and cool clothing are good ideas. Perhaps only an excessive fear of helmet hair should be a deterrence.

“I haven’t figured out the exact route yet that we’ll take,” the Commissioner says, “but we’ll see Battery Park and Battery Park City,  Hudson River Park and the new park that connects Hudson River Park and Riverside.  We’ll see some new parks on the Upper West Side and Harlem…we’ll pass by the state park on top of the sewage treatment plant in West Harlem, and [maybe] will see some of the improvements [underway] to Fort Washington Park.  If we have the energy, we can go as far north as the Little Red Lighthouse — the iconic structure underneath the great bridge, the George Washington Bridge. You know, the story as told in the children’s book is more or less true. The river didn’t come to life and we don’t know if it was exactly called back into action on one dark and stormy night — but we do know it was saved from demolition and restored.”

Hudson River Greenway, New York

Benepe points out that the necklace of parks and the continuous bike paths that now adjoin them, “the opening up of the formerly industrial waterfront for recreational use,” is felt by many to be one of the city’s two or three greatest urban planning accomplishments of recent decades. “I’m a recreational cyclist. I get out and ride on weekends,” he says, “and you can now do a continuous ride without ever having to cross a street, from the Battery [on the south end of the island] all the way up to Dyckman Street [in the Inwood neighborhood of most northern Manhattan] because all the missing links have now been filled in. That’s a distance of almost the entire length of Manhattan.”

This has all occurred during the biggest period of park investment, construction and expansion for New York City since the 1930s. “The waterfront parks and re-purposing the post-industrial and post-maritime landscape for public recreation has been a major focus in particular,” Benepe explains. “This is being done around the world and has been a particular emphasis here in New York.” As a signature program of the Bloomberg mayoralty, Benepe estimates the city has invested in excess of $1 billion dollars on waterfront parks alone, $3 billion on parks in total over the last 10 years. “Just look at Brooklyn Bridge Park and Hudson River Park — those alone are half a billion. Plus [the development] along the Bronx River, the Harlem River, the East River waterfront park south of South Street Seaport…so I think a billion is probably accurate. Certainly no one else in the United States is doing this much.

“New York City has become both a lab and a bellwether for urban park design, development, construction and management [with] all permutations of creative public-private partnerships,” he explains. Conference attendees will be able to see first hand “many examples of terrific landscape design by talented architects, and more varied models of park management in one place then you can find in 10 other cities.”

Presented by City Parks Alliance, Greater & Greener: Re-Imagining Parks for 21st Century Cities will feature over 100 tours and workshops.  Space for the Commissioner’s bike tour is very limited, so be sure to sign up soon.

Please visit www.urbanparks2012.org for full program and registration details.

The conference will be a four-day immersion in best practices and bold new thinking that can be taken home and applied to green space planning the world over. Its plenaries and workshops — more than 40 of which are coordinated with outdoor tours — will let you experience New York City’s visionary park lessons first hand. Customize your conference experience by building your own program from the more than 100 sessions and events taking place at New York University and throughout the city.

• Hear thoughts on new park design as a driver of community redevelopment
• Discover new revenue streams from public and private sources
• Explore the latest uses of social media for fundraising and advocacy
• See how eco-design technologies are bringing water, wildlife and whimsy back to urban neighborhoods
• Listen to experts who’ll help you measure impact and maintain your park effectively
• Learn how to forge alliances with civic groups, elected officials, private organizations, the National Park Service and entrepreneurs!

Sign up early to bike with the NYC Parks & Recreation Commissioner, kayak down the Hudson, canoe on the Bronx River, visit new green markets and park-based foodie meccas, and join us across the East River in Brooklyn for a marvelous evening of food, wine and breathtaking Manhattan skyline views under the Brooklyn Bridge, in the city’s newest sustainable waterfront park.

Don’t miss an unparalleled opportunity from July 14-17, 2012 to catch up with colleagues, make new contacts, and network with leaders in urban park innovation across North America and around the world!  Visit www.urbanparks2012.org for more details.

Urban radicals want automobiles banned. Urban moderates can perhaps live with cars as long as they’re neither seen nor heard.

In European central cities the radicals have the upper hand. U.S. cities are increasingly settling for a compromise–an expensive compromise–by putting freeway segments underground and covering them with parkland. Whether called a lid, deck, bridge, or tunnel, there are already at least 24 of these parks in the country and a dozen more somewhere in the planning pipeline. Surprisingly, because of both undulating topographies and the fact that many cities are already operating on multiple above-and-below-ground levels, there are numerous opportunities to construct more freeway deck parks. As the impact of automobiles becomes ever less welcome in cities, these lids have moved from the novel to the accepted to, increasingly, the expected. The sometimes considerable cost has gone from being dismissed as “porkbarrel” to being redefined more positively as amenity investment with high economic payback.

Drivers passing through Seattle’s downtown core on I-5 go underneath the city’s five-acre Freeway Park, built in 1974.

In a study carried out by the Center for City Park Excellence in 2007, it was found that the average size of the nation’s freeway parks is about 8 acres and each covers about 1,600 linear feet of highway. Most famous is Seattle’s aptly named Freeway Park, designed by the Lawrence Halprin firm and opened with great fanfare in 1976, but the concept actually goes back to 1939 when Robert Moses constructed the Franklin D. Roosevelt Expressway along Manhattan’s East River, tunneled it under the mayor’s home at Gracie Mansion and constructed 14-acre Carl Shurz Park on top. In 1950 Moses did it again, in Brooklyn, when citizens rose up against a planned expressway through the center of Brooklyn Heights. As a compromise he added the 1/3-mile long Brooklyn Promenade with its supreme view of lower Manhattan, remarking self-satisfiedly at the ribbon-cutting, “I don’t know of anything quite like this in any city in the world.” The latest have been New Jersey’s innovative highway redesigns in Trenton and Atlantic City and the Rose Kennedy Greenway park blocks over Boston’s massive “Big Dig.”

The Interstate Highway System, when it was originally conceived in the early 1950s, was designed to link but not penetrate cities. By the 1960s, however, the distinction had been forgotten. Highways became the preeminent tool of urban renewal and redesign, and vast swaths of urban real estate were paved over. Waterfronts were blockaded in Portland, Cincinnati, Hartford, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Nooses of concrete were wound tightly around the downtowns of Dallas and Charlotte. Trenches of noise and smog cut through Boston, Detroit, Seattle, and Atlanta. Stupendous elevated structures threw shadows over Miami and New Orleans. And wide strips of land were taken from large, iconic parks in Los Angeles (Griffith Park), St. Louis (Forest Park), Baltimore (Druid Hill Park), and San Diego (Balboa Park).

A few downtown parks actually survived the devastation thanks to the intervention of historic preservationists, including Lytle Park in Cincinnati and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. In both cases, citizen outcry forced the highway builders to tunnel underneath (although technically Lytle Park was leveled and then reconstructed three years later).

But it wasn’t until the construction of Freeway Park that the “deck the freeway” concept began getting some serious attention. Because of the constrained, hourglass geography of Seattle, Interstate 5 was a particularly damaging road, and the environmentally oriented populace was dismayed by the impact. “There was a large moat of traffic between downtown and historically residential First Hill neighborhood,” says Freeway Park Neighborhood Association President David Brewster. But the city was lucky–not only was I-5 sunk into a deckable trough as it passed downtown, but a former Seattle mayor, James “Dorm” Braman, had just been appointed assistant secretary of transportation for urban systems and the environment by President Richard Nixon. Braman was amenable to the deck, which was promoted by civic leader Jim Ellis and paid for under the city’s “Forward Thrust” bond initiative. Freeway Park opened in time for the bicentennial and garnered coast-to-coast attention. “It was a model for other cities to heal the scar that cuts right through a neighborhood,” says Brewster.

Freeway Park was beautiful and memorable, but it failed on one major count: acoustics. At 5 acres it couldn’t completely muffle the sound of traffic, and the park experience is accompanied by a constant white noise–not obtrusive, but not minimal, either. Phoenix’s 10-acre Hance Park seems to have solved the noise challenge (as has Seattle’s new, much larger Sam Smith Park). Labeled by the Phoenix New Times “a rare Phoenix instance of nature over traffic–in this case, literally,” Hance Park is decked over the Papago Freeway, uniting uptown and downtown and providing a park adjacent to the city’s central library. The freeway (Interstate 10) was originally planned as an elevated bridge through downtown but opposition by citizens and the Arizona Republic killed that idea in a 1973 ballot measure. Not until ten years later did the city finally accept a below-grade solution with the park as a key sweetener. Hance Park opened in 1992 and today is the site of a Japanese Garden. As a sign of success, it is gradually becoming surrounded by a growing number of upscale condominium towers.

By decking over a portion of I-35, Duluth, Minnesota, was able to save its Rose Garden and provide a park connection directly to its Lake Superior. Credit: Minnesota Dept. of Transportation.

Freeway parks have also bridged the divide between cities and their waterfronts. In Duluth, Minnesota, a plan to build Interstate 35 along the Lake Superior shoreline generated intense opposition from environmentalists and historic preservationists. By shortening the planned freeway’s length (and gaining the backing of powerful Duluth then-congressman John Blatnik) the city used the savings to pay for park covers. Ultimately, three different deck parks were built, including one that saved a historic Rose Garden.

Construction costs for deck parks can be wincingly high, but there is also an upside–the land itself is generally free, made available through air rights by the state transportation agency. In center-city locations this can amount to a multimillion-dollar gift. Land near the Santa Ana Freeway by Los Angeles City Hall, for instance, goes for between $2 million and $3 million an acre. In near-downtown San Diego by Balboa Park an acre is worth up to $13 million. Regardless of cost, the actual force driving–and making feasible–most deck parks is the opportunity for neighboring private development and redevelopment. In Trenton, the New Jersey Department of Transportation spent $150 million on the new 6.5-acre Riverwalk deck over U.S. 29, linking the city to the Delaware River. In response, notes Trenton Planning Director Andrew Carten, “The project resulted in a significant spike in interest and the sale prices of property. After all, would you rather look over 600 trucks barreling past every day, or a scenic park and river?” One lot, worth $120,000 preconstruction, was developed with six housing units that sold for $200,000 each. The presence of the park also helped recruit a new 82-unit market rate residential building.

The cost of the Boston Central Artery–the gargantuan project to bury the elevated Fitzgerald Expressway, which yielded as a surface byproduct the Rose Kennedy Greenway–has caused some people to doubt the feasibility of such parks in the future. But the Central Artery was primarily a transportation project that combined massive demolition along with even more massive construction. It also included major bridges and underwater tunnels. Of the $14-billion price tag, only an estimated $40 million was attributable to the mile-long stretch of four parks that opened to the public in October 2008. Certainly not inexpensive, but very much in line with many other new, showcase destination parks that are helping to redefine the nation’s premier urban centers.

The Woodall-Rodgers Park, planned over a three-block stretch of the Woodhall-Rodgers Freeway in Dallas, will connect the currently separated downtown and arts district from the Uptown neighborhood. Credit: Office of James Burnett.

Projects where freeways are already below-grade are more feasible, and four particularly high-prospect opportunities are currently being explored in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Dallas, and San Diego. In St. Louis, Mayor Francis Slay is promoting the “three-block solution,” a plan to cover a portion of I-70 between center city and the world-famous Gateway Arch. “We’re trying to get the annual 3 million visitors to the Arch into downtown St. Louis,” says Peter Sortino, president of the Danforth Foundation, which is handling the planning. “We’re also trying to help those already downtown more easily reach the Arch and the Mississippi riverfront.” An early estimate put the cost at a minimum of $40 million. Cincinnati faces the identical situation. An interstate highway, Fort Washington Way, is a barrier between downtown and the parkland along the Ohio River. Cincinnati had an opportunity to construct a five-block-long park deck during a road reconstruction (and narrowing) in 2007, but shied because of cost. As a compromise, the new Fort Washington Way was equipped with $10 million worth of steel pilings capable of supporting a future park.

Dallas, on the other hand, is plunging ahead with planning and funding a park over a stretch of the Woodall-Rodgers Freeway. The freeway separates the city’s downtown and arts district from the Uptown neighborhood, and a three-block park cover is seen as both improving the urban form and opening up new opportunities for development. A trolley line would run through the park, and condominium towers are expected to flank it on both sides. A developer of a nearby tower is enthusiastic, telling the Dallas Tribune that the park “will be a fabulous amenity to [my] building.” The park’s price tag is estimated at more than $60 million, but Dallas’s confident and ardent boosters are busily raising matching funds from private sources.

Trenton, New Jersey’s new 6.5-acre Riverwalk deck over U.S. 29 links the city to the Delaware River; it is credited with sparking development and reinvestment in nearby properties. Credit: Vollmer & Associates.

In San Diego, downtown interests are in the early stages of evaluating decking a few blocks of I-5 so as to forge a link with Balboa Park. The city has been in the midst of an unprecedented center city residential construction boom, and the highway presents a major barrier for the thousands of apartment dwellers who have little access to green space. Meanwhile, activists in Los Angeles are determined not to lose their “Freeway Capital of the U.S.” moniker and are evaluating eight different sites. “We want to now become the ‘Freeway Deck Park Capital of the World,’” said Don Scott, chair of the Hollywood Central Park Coalition.

Despite the cost of a park deck, there are numerous sources of local, state, and federal funds that can be cobbled together, particularly if an analysis shows that associated development will generate significantly more tax revenue. Often the deck superstructure is paid for by the federal government while actual park development is financed by the city: Phoenix spent $5 million landscaping Hance Park. The Trenton deck came about through reconstruction of a state highway and was paid for by the state of New Jersey. In Cincinnati, 20 percent of the narrowing of Fort Washington Way was financed through private dollars, including $250,000 from the Cincinnati Bengals football team.

Indeed, elements typical of rural environments can – and must – be part of any truly livable urban design, as Olmstead and Vaux‘s plan for Central Park in Manhattan demonstrates, and as further proven by the Olmstead firm‘s five-mile long “Emerald Necklace” around Boston, encompassing 1000 acres of parkland, connecting the Boston Common with the 527-acre Franklin Park.

We know that the better connected parks are, the more a park system can provide healthful recreation—and transportation, too. A recent publication from The Trust for Public Land shows how interconnected trails, greenways‚ and parks support bicycling, running, walking, skating, skiing‚ and even wheelchair travel—reaching all the way from home to work for some users. And several small parks can be connected to create a “large-park experience,” with a tennis court in one park, a basketball court in another, a swimming pool in a third. Connections can be a system of sidewalks or bike lanes, complemented by outstanding signage and perhaps dressed up with a catchy name, such as the Wellness Walk or the Fitness Funway.

The easiest way to create interconnections that also extend a park system is in stream valley parks, particularly where a small stream flows into a larger river and both are flanked with trails. This kind of intersection, comparable to a highway interchange or a train junction, more than doubles the usefulness of a given route. An even more effective connection can be made by bridging a river with a pedestrian crossing, either a new bridge or a repurposed old one. Wherever this has been done—including in Austin, Cincinnati, Chattanooga, Little Rock, Minneapolis, Nashville, Omaha, Pittsburgh, and Tampa—the bridges have become instantly popular attractions.

Another great connector is a rail-trail, a park path constructed out of an abandoned train track. Most of the more than 15,000 miles of U.S. rail-trails are rural, but an increasing number are in cities, including Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas; Houston; Portland, Oregon; Orlando; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

Platte River Greenway, Denver. Credit: Darcy Kiefel.

Even without a stream or an abandoned railroad, it’s sometimes possible to create a linear corridor. It happened in San Francisco after the public utilities commission decided to retire an underground water main through Visitacion Valley, a lower-income immigrant neighborhood. The corridor had been kept free of weighty construction over the pipe, resulting in a six-block swath of weedy lots through the heart of the community. When the commission tried to sell the land, neighbors objected and worked with The Trust for Public Land to turn it into a park and garden. Today the Visitacion Valley Greenway supports both physical exercise and improved nutrition—and introduces visitors to the exotic Asian medicinal plants growing there.

Another example of a successful city creating connectors is Denver.  In 2009, the American Obesity Association rated Denver residents the least obese of big city Americans. The reason, in part, is their sporty lifestyle. Supporting that way of life is the Platte River Greenway.

It took 30 years to create the Greenway from a former industrial backwater. Today its 15 parks linked by 100 miles of trails attract hundreds of thousands of users. The middle 12 miles—which stretch on either end deep into the suburbs—are operated by the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation, with support from the private Greenway Foundation. Its centerpiece is 22-acre Commons Park, constructed as part of a new walkable neighborhood on a former railyard on the edge of downtown.

Not only does the Greenway lure a continual stream of cyclists, runners, and walkers, the South Platte River itself was reengineered with rocks, riffles, and inflatable dams so that it offers whitewater rapids for kayakers and rafters.

Public investment in the Greenway totaling about $70 million has fueled $2.5 billion in residential, commercial, retail, sports, and entertainment projects along the corridor. Denver, which for several decades was losing population, is now growing again—and recreational opportunities are one reason why.

Randall’s article appeared in the August/September 2011 issue of Planning magazine, available here.

We’ve written before about how the town’s new traffic circle has successfully managed traffic flow at a busy five-way intersection, diverted thousands of gallons of untreated stormwater away from the nearby creek, and become the town center by bringing residents together in an attractive public space.  The more recent news is how the traffic roundabout is spurring local economic development with the construction of a multimodal transportation station adjacent to the circle, courtesy of a U.S. Department of Transportation grant.  Both the transportation hub, which will eventually have high-speed rail service and create an estimated 400-500 new jobs, and the circle take advantage of the town’s existing infrastructure, bus service, and the historic central business district to attract even more residents to the new town center.

The one-third-acre roundabout does much more than move cars. It invites pedestrians with shade trees, benches, lighting, bike parking, green space, and a water feature. People have lunch, read, and play music, and the open space invites community gatherings such as a holiday caroling event. It is the anchor for a community-wide revitalization and is part of Uptown Normal’s LEED-ND Silver recognition.

A popular rails-to-trails conversion, the Constitution Trail, leads to and around the roundabout, helping both to revitalize Normal and to bring people from surrounding areas to Normal’s central district. A new Children’s Discovery Museum on the edge of the roundabout already receives over 140,000 visitors per year, and a hotel and conference enter have recently opened nearby. One indication of the success of the redevelopment is that property values in the district have increased by about 30 percent since 2004.

According to the short video, this traffic circle was almost banned to pedestrians.  It’s a good thing town officials fought back.

Read more about the project here, as well as the other winners from the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.

From all of us at City Parks Blog, thanks for reading, commenting and inspiring us this past year with all of your park stories and successes.  We look forward to hearing how park development and redevelopment is changing your city.  Happy New Year and all the best in 2012

Twelve parks – one each month – will be featured on CPA’s website home page in 2012.  Each “Frontline Park” story will show how parks and their stewards are on the forefront of creating healthier, more sustainable cities.  With each month’s feature, CPA will coordinate with each park partner a joint press release for local, national, and social media to announce their selection as a “Frontline Park.”  Featured parks will also be included in CPA’s quarterly e-newsletter Benchmarks distributed to hundreds of CPA members and on the City Parks blog.

We are looking for the best stories.  Is there a non-traditional leader who has helped to bring about change in your local park?  How has park programming helped to address pressing urban issues, such as public health, job creation or community revitalization?  Have you done something really fun and innovative to increase revenue, cultivate volunteers or educate young people?  How did a crisis create an opportunity to build a new partnership?  Stories should be related to one or more of the following topics:

• Community Capacity Building
• Design
• Economic Development
• Education
• Environment
• Funding
• Health
• Maintenance
• Programming
• Public/Private Partnerships
• Safety
• Transportation
• Workforce Development

For more information about application guidelines, please click here: Frontline Park Nominations

Union Station and Columbus Plaza. Credit: Rob Ketcherside (Flickr Feed).

Washington, D.C.’s Union Station is a major destination for tourists and commuters, with about 29 million people visiting it each year.  As a first glimpse of the city for many people traveling by rail or car, Union Station was designed as a grand entryway to the nation’s capital.  It’s classical Beaux-Arts architecture influenced other popular landmarks in Washington, D.C., such as the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.  But as public transit increases in the city, and the surrounding neighborhoods rapidly undergo redevelopment, it is clear that the 104-year-old-railroad facility needs a facelift.

We recently came across an article in The Washington Post about an 18-month reconstruction project to improve access and safety throughout Columbus Plaza in front of Union Station.  Many years in the making, the $7.8 million redesign will include new sidewalks and upgrades to the traffic signals to enhance the flow of pedestrians and vehicles throughout the plaza.  The plan also calls for eliminating a fishhook-shaped road that cuts through Columbus Plaza, restoring the plaza to its earlier appearance and allowing for easier pedestrian access to the station from the Capitol and other areas.  Additional transit improvements to the area include the very successful bicycle storage and rental facility added to the west side of the station, and laying tracks for the future H Street streetcar route that will terminate at Union Station.

As with any huge endeavor undertaken in Washington, D.C., there are many agencies and interested parties involved in this complex project, including the federal government (who owns Union Station), National Park Service (manages Columbus Plaza), city government (controls the roads), and the Architect of the Capitol (land on the other side of Massachusetts Avenue).  Other partners involved include Amtrak, Greyhound, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation.  And of course, any structural changes at all to Union Station must also take into account its historical prominence.

Because the “downtrodden appearance” of the plaza when compared to the magnificent train station often confuses the thousands of pedestrians and motorists who use it each day, locals and visitors alike are anxious to see how the reconfiguration will create a more welcoming transportation hub.  As Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, summed up, the idea is to have the space in front of Union Station “be more about a plaza and less about trying to walk across nine lines of vehicle traffic.”

Washington, DC has been blessed with two rivers. The Potomac, though it suffers from pollution issues of its own (the Potomac Conservancy gave the river a D+ rating, in part because of the growing population of genetically mutated fishes),  provides the backdrop to the capitol’s most famous monuments and the springtime explosion of cherry trees. It’s also a hub of recreational activity, lined with parks and trails – one of which, the C&O Canal Trail, follows the river northwards for 184 miles.

The Potomac River looking towards the city center. Photo credit: Flickr user ktylerconk

The banks of the Potomac gained even more greenery with the recent completion of Georgetown Waterfront Park. The 9.5-acre, $24 million project, designed by renowned landscape architecture firm Wallace, Roberts, and Todd, makes the most of its cramped location under an elevated highway with dramatic lighting, a labyrinth, and an interactive fountain. Situated between two rowing centers, Thompson Boat Center and the Potomac Boat Club, it also includes a pergola and river stairs built to accommodate spectators of rowing regattas.

The recently completed Georgetown Waterfront Park. Photo credit: Flickr user NCinDC.

But there’s momentum growing across town, too.

D.C.’s other river, the Anacostia, which forms the southern tip of the city where it flows into the Potomac, has long been an afterthought. Its banks, and the neighborhoods around it, have suffered (a 2008 report by the DC Office of Planning puts median income in the area at 47% below the city’s average, and unemployment continues to far exceed that of the city as a whole).

It is in many ways the opposite of the esteemed Potomac, as captured in this Washington Post description:

“To most Washingtonians, the Anacostia is a very remote presence — that dirty glop of water under the 11th Street Bridge, the Potomac’s ugly cousin, the barrier that sets off the city’s poorer sections from Capitol Hill.”

Once forty feet deep and clear, it is now so choked with sediment and pollution that it is shallow enough to walk across in places.

But if it’s a waterway on life support, the prognosis is good. The Washington Post reports that over the past decade, Congress has appropriated $130 million for Anacostia cleanup. It is also the beneficiary of the District’s 5-cent tax on plastic bags dubbed the “Anacostia River Cleanup Initiative”. The program began in 2010, and has been a major success, dramatically cutting plastic bag litter, and raising $2.5 million for building trash-blocking grates and supporting local cleanup efforts.

Unfortunately, not every attempt to resuscitate the area has been as immediately impactful. Several high-profile efforts to revive the riverfront with parks and mixed-use development emerged just as the recession was beginning, and have since sputtered to a halt. One notable exception, though, is the Capitol Riverfront, a city-created Business Improvement District at the base of the Anacostia that in a few years has become home to over 3,000 residents, 35,000 daytime employees, and seven parks. Two are on the waterfront, including The Yards Park, a new 5.5-acre space with a popular water feature, a pedestrian bridge, and a riverfront boardwalk.

Map of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail

Extending upwards from the Capitol Riverfront is a 16-mile system of trails on either side of the river in various stages of completion, dubbed the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail. The Anacostia offers something to planners and developers that is increasingly rare, which is space. (The District’s population surged past 600,000 residents in 2010, during a growth spurt not seen since the end of World War II). Compared to the built-up areas along the Potomac (where it took 40 years from planning to construction to carve out less than 10 acres for the Georgetown Waterfront Park) the Anacostia offers a nearly blank slate for big, new ideas.

The Yards Park water feature. Photo credit: Flickr user Mr. T in DC

D.C. is not exactly starved of park acreage – 19% of its land is parks, the second highest among dense cities. The area to the east of the Anacostia is particularly park-dense, but the abundance of overall space masks some deficiencies that a well-connected system of riverfront parks could help address.

Most obvious is the demand for more trails and linear parks. The roads in Rock Creek Park are closed to cars on weekends, bringing huge numbers of walkers, runners, and cyclists into the park. West Potomac Park is bursting at the seams many weeknights, as packs of cyclists and runners wind their way around a 3-mile loop. And more important than the length of the Anacostia Riverwalk is the fact that its trails will link both sides of the river and be connected by a system of bridges (6 are planned or already have pedestrian access) which will allow users to create loops of various lengths.

Further, once completed, the Riverwalk could offer far more than the sum of its parts by leveraging the value of currently disjointed and underused parks along the river. The 446-acre National Arboretum, far from a Metro stop and difficult to reach by bike or foot, could greatly benefit from waterfront pedestrian access. And adding paths to Langston Golf course could better integrate it into the park system, as we discussed in a Landscape Architecture Magazine piece. Just to the south is Congressional Cemetery, through which paths currently run, a great example of integrating public use into a park-like space.

One of the more intriguing possibilities, to mirror the rowing-centric Potomac, is that the Anacostia could offer a place for exploring the city by kayak. Portions of the Potomac are already popular amongst white-water kayakers as well as those who prefer more placid waters, and numerous cities (see Milwaukee, Houston, and Detroit) have established water trail systems that are closely integrated with riverfront parks.

And for the boldest visionaries, there is RFK Stadium, which sits in the middle of the riverfront and is maybe the most conspicuously underused space in the area. A recent article in the Washington Post invited thinkers to discuss the future of the mostly-unused, fifty year-old stadium, and four of the five contributors pondered its potential as a park (often mixed with mixed-use development), offering active amenities like rock climbing or a velodrome to complement the mostly passive recreation areas alongside the riverbanks.

With development starting from scratch in many areas, there is a unique opportunity to create and improve parks in concert with development and transit improvements. The popular Circulator bus routes recently began operating in Anacostia, and the streetcar system that is set to start running through northeast DC along H Street, which is helping to drive the revitalization of the area, may one day cross into Anacostia on the 11^th Street Bridge.

Bike trails along the Anacostia. Photo credit: Flickr user TrailVoice.

Anacostia already has many acres of parkland, but amenity-rich, well-connected riverfront parks are a totally different creature in terms of development potential. There is no shortage of inspiring precedents for an overhaul of the Anacostia and its parks:

• In Minneapolis, a $55 million in investment in parks on the previously industrial riverbanks, along with $150 million in other public improvements, leveraged $1.2 billion in private investment and the creation of thousands of jobs and new residential units.
• Houston is putting its system of Bayou greenways (expected to cost $490 million) at the forefront of its efforts to attract a young, well-educated population, and a recent study led by John Crompton estimated an annual return of $117 million.
• Columbus turned a 160-acre brownfield along the banks of the Scioto River into an urban outdoors destination, featuring a climbing wall, an Audubon center, access for watercraft, and trails that lead to the Scioto Mile in the downtown core. Now the nearby Brewery District is witnessing a revival in residential development.
• Chattanooga, Tennessee was labeled as having the dirtiest air in the country in 1969, and during the 1980’s the city lost 10% of its population. Its dramatic turnaround (it was just celebrated in Outside magazine as the best city to live in, alongside the titans of outdoorsy urban meccas like Portland and Seattle) is in large part attributable to the park-centered $120 million redevelopment of its riverfront and downtown.

With a consortium of 19 agencies comprising the overarching Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, and the slowdown in real estate since the recession, it’s no surprise that development is occurring ploddingly. But as the river itself is cleaned and its channels deepen, there’s a growing sense that so too is the commitment of the city to making the Anacostia a springboard for livable urban development.