Public Spaces
How about Why Don't We Control Our Own Parks Day?
Park(ing) Day (which is today; go check out a pop-up parklet at 12th and G, 1350 Pennsylvania, or 1101 Wilson in Rosslyn) started out as a guerrilla performance art project to call attention to how little public space on streets goes to people. In DC, there's a different parks-related issue that needs attention: The obstacles to actually programming the parks we have.
Setting up the Wilson Building parklet. Photo by Anne Phelps on Twitter.
In San Francisco, where Park(ing) Day started, there are whole neighborhoods with very few places to sit. In New York the situation was even more acute, at least until a recent push under Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan to convert a lot of short, underused bits of street into plazas in places like the Meatpacking District and Fort Greene.
In DC, that's not our biggest park problem. The District actually has a lot of public spaces, especially in the L'Enfant city. The biggest problem is that not much happens in those public spaces, and the people of DC don't control them.
A lot of them mainly sit empty or accommodate homeless individuals, except maybe at lunch when office workers come out to patronize the food trucks and then sit on the sometimes awkwardly-placed benches. Lydia DePillis wrote last year:
Franklin Square and Mt. Vernon Square are unkempt and unwelcoming. Freedom Plaza is a desert, and Pershing Park a swampy thicket. Lafayette Park feels securitized and touristy, the National Mall more like an African savannah than your back yard. It's hard to even imagine a world where they could take on the character of London's Picadilly Circus or Rome's Piazza Navona, with their liveliness and 24-hour sensibility.Not all parks are problematic. DePillis cites drum circles in McPherson Square, constant activity in Dupont Circle, and the great success of Columbia Heights' plaza.
The top, but not only, obstacle for these parks in the National Park Service. Most of the small circles, squares and triangles around DC, especially in the L'Enfant City, are federal parks. The Park Service's historic preservation rules prohibit changing the layout of parks, and burdensome concession rules restrict the potential to even have a little coffee kiosk.
Bryant Park. Photo by panduh on Flickr.
The best urban parks have things like moveable furniture, so that groups of people can sit and talk together instead of having to all face the same direction on a bolted-down bench along a path. They have concerts and other events in the evenings, often funded with some commercial sponsorship.
Jacqueline Dupree pointed out on Twitter that the amazing Yards Park in Near Southeast came about only after the federal government transferred the land to the District and private entities entered a partnership with the city to get the park built.
DC is talking about an 11th Street Recreation Bridge when there is a huge amount of parkland right by the bridge, on the banks of the Anacostia. But DC probably couldn't put the mix of recreation, vending, and arts, including commercial ventures like the trapeze school and establishments serving food and drink, on any of that land.
Food trucks have brought a lot of life to DC parks. Ironically, NPS rules don't allow the food trucks, but since they are in District parking spaces, they can operate. They can't operate on streets like 7th and 4th through the Mall, though. Peter May from NPS said at a National Capital Planning Commission meeting that the agency believes it has complete jurisdiction over streets with NPS property on both sides.
NPS has actually been making great strides lately. They ended some particularly restrictive concession contracts, and new contracts won't be as exclusive. They're building a relationship with Dupont Festival, the organization that brings soccer watching, theater, and community events to Dupont Circle. They're open to a downtown playground and put Capital Bikeshare on the Mall.
Nor are DC-controlled parks a panacea. The Department of Parks and Recreation isn't any better funded than the Park Service, and often under-maintains its parks while giving more attention to rec centers. The September 11 memorial grove in Langdon Park got funding from a number of organizations but little follow-up attention from those groups, says @Sept1GroveW5DC on Twitter.
New York activated its parks with substantial private money and public-private partnerships. It's been willing to bring a little commerce into the parks in exchange for making them truly great places. Working with the BIDs is the best hope for DC public spaces.
None of this is to say Park(ing) Day isn't still quite valuable here. It's a great opportunity for councilmembers to try giving up their prime parking spaces for something better, and one very tiny reminder that this space they get for free isn't entirely free. It's also a great chance for organizations like Casey Trees and Washington Parks and People to show off what they do.
Bike parking in the street at the Wilson Building parklet. Photo by WABA.
Ironically, Tommy Wells can do more in his park in the Pennsylvania Avenue roadway than the District could on the adjacent sidewalk. NPS controls those sidewalks, too, which is why there are very few cafes and no Capital Bikeshare stations along the avenue. Wells put bicycle parking in the street, but DDOT wouldn't be able to put it on the (very wide) sidewalk.
A lot of people don't know that Dupont, McPherson, Franklin, Stanton, and the Pennsylvania Avenue sidewalks are federal, or the little triangle by Dupont Circle Metro, or the triangle that will now be the Ukranian Manmade Famine memorial. Many federal employees and hill staffers don't know (though many do).
Could we use some sort of guerrilla activity to call attention to these issues? Any ideas?
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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by iana on Sep 21, 2012 12:20 pm • link • report
by charlie on Sep 21, 2012 12:27 pm • link • report
by onelasttime on Sep 21, 2012 12:31 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Sep 21, 2012 12:35 pm • link • report
by charlie on Sep 21, 2012 12:39 pm • link • report
Let's see what we do with McMillan Park which is ours. Sounds like we'll just concrete over it.
by Tom Coumaris on Sep 21, 2012 1:08 pm • link • report
There is no comparison (none) between the job DPR and NPS do maintaining the parks (design integrity, plants, trees). Hands down, it's not even close - NPS.
Until DPS and UFA can more effectively prove themselves, they should not be given any more property to "manage."
I wonder if the people who throw out "Bryant Park" as a solution to all Dc's supposed park problems actually know the amount of work (paid labor, unpaid labor), complex managing structure, and most especially the phenomenal amount of money that has gone in to its restoration.
But, alas, to compare NYC and DC is also kind of useless.
by Jazzy on Sep 21, 2012 1:14 pm • link • report
You're right that it's a big task, but it's certainly possible. The most important part is finding a way to pay for full-time management and maintenance. Bryant Park has employees who, among other things, move chairs to different parts of the park if they notice a shortage!
The Bryant Park Corporation does this for Bryant Park mostly through sponsorships and donations these days, but the Downtown BID could possible provide a similar management service here. They already employ people to sweep sidewalks and direct visitors to various destinations in the BID.
by Eric Fidler on Sep 21, 2012 1:45 pm • link • report
http://dcclims1.dccouncil.us/lims/legislation.aspx?LegNo=B18-0299
And here's what I wrote back in 2009 about the hearing on the bill:
http://www.jdland.com/dc/index.cfm?id=3004
by JD on Sep 21, 2012 2:01 pm • link • report
what is this mcmillan park of which you speak - you mean the place that hasn't been a park in a couple of generations?
by confused on Sep 21, 2012 3:03 pm • link • report
by Tom Veil on Sep 21, 2012 3:25 pm • link • report
by Andrew Pendleton on Sep 21, 2012 3:49 pm • link • report
If a BID or some private entity is to be involved, best not to turn it over to DPR. To expect DPR to pull off a Bryant Park? It is, as the French say, to laugh.
I trust NPS so very much more to preserve the design integrity of parks and of the city as a whole. The poor people at DPR are afraid of their own shadows.
There is a way to do it, but I see no signs of it, so far, on the horizon, not in DC.
But at least you get to the heart of the matter: The most important part is finding a way to pay for full-time management and maintenance.
But Eric, really are you comparing the $ the BPC has with what the downtown DC BID has? Well if that is even remotely possible, there's obviously something I don't know about the downtown BID!
PS: Aren't there already food trucks around at least one block of the park? Or am I thinking of some place else?
by Jazzy on Sep 21, 2012 4:12 pm • link • report
In any case, learn from the Occupy movement and have a very well defined program, agenda, argument, etc.
2. I laid out a way to redefine the parks in the city, so that the "federal interest" parks can be more carefully and closely defined, and as a result the NPS would have a way to release more park land back to the city.
But that would require a top notch parks plan for the city, which I don't know if we are capable of producing. In any case, a "DC" parks plan should still make recommendations about federal lands, if only to more fully represent the interests of DC citizens in their every day use of those parks and lands.
3. I used to be very very critical of NPS, but now I have more sympathy and empathy for them, because I think the problem is that anything they do in DC is subject to hyper scrutiny from Congress, the President and EB leadership, all the top DOI officials. That has to make them pretty conservative.
In other cities which aren't DC, NPS is more open to doing more stuff. I've written about it from time to time.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/12/19/her_quest_bringing_the_national_parks_to_the_people/
But they aren't perfect:
http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/inga_saffron/20101226_For_tourists_and_city__not_re-created_equal.html
3. Yes, the NYC parks initiatives are possible because of all the money floating around NYC. DC does not have the same kind of opportunity and philanthropic community although there is no question that BIDs can be more involved in this, like in the Canal Park/Yards Park example.
4. I do agree that DC has generally relied on NPS to provide park land and operations without having to pay for it. This issue would have to be addressed going forward (and as part of a parks planning initiative).
5. Relatedly is the NoMA BID effort to create a public realm plan. I think the NoMA plan while wildly successful is a failure in part because it didn't include this kind of creation as part of it. I take some responsibility for it, 'cause one of the very first proponents for a NoMA plan was me, via ANC6C, back in 2003 coming out of the effort to landmark the Uline Arena. I didn't know enough about planning then to fully understand the big gaps in how DC does planning, and how this problem would result.
Therefore it's an illustration of the failure to not have a parks plan and to not to comprehensive neighborhood/sector planning more generally in the city. Small area plans are build out management plans more or less, they aren't neighborhood plans.
6. Anyway, now NoMA BID is doing a parks plan. I was very critical of their earliest efforts and I was shocked that they have responded to that criticism by retaining the planning firm I recommended and broadening the focus on public realm from a previous focus only on green space.
I guess since the BID just got a big planning grant from the city that they'll go ahead and do a comprehensive plan.
Anyway, the model plan I suggested to them is from Buckhead, Atlanta.
http://livablebuckhead.com/sustainability/greenspace-2/buckhead-collection/
The firm they've retained is capable of great work (the lead in their parks practice, David Barth, is one of the best parks planners in the US and I've learned a lot from his work).
But greatness in planning is dependent on the client, the scope of work, and how visionary the client is willing to be.
by Richard Layman on Sep 22, 2012 7:44 am • link • report
Just wanna point out that some of the world famous squares that Washingtonians are jealous of are hundreds of years old. Picadilly Circus itself was built in 1819, but the place has a much longer history. Nevertheless, barely younger than DC. Piazza Navona is from just after the middle ages and had a circus in the first century AD.
These places have had ups and downs, and generally a function in city life. And that is something that DC often misses. A 24/7 city life. DC still dies at night, except for a few well-designed pockets of late-night fun.
by Jasper on Sep 22, 2012 7:55 am • link • report
At one of them, to hear how the people were describing DC as becoming so "cool," all the focus on biking, etc., was shocking, etc. (Although one guy had gone to the H St. Festival and complained that it was too crowded and uncomfortable and he was right actually...)
As a critic it's hard for me sometimes to just take in the good things. In any case there is no question that the way that incremental year by year improvements accrete and are at the point of hitting critical mass (and becoming significantly visible) is a positive.
So while we are moving maybe to an 18/6 hour city, yes we aren't a 24 hour city. But there are plenty of diamonds in the rough.
E.g., take Dupont Circle. Imagine if the roadways around the park were reconfigured and more road was given back to the park-- we all know as drivers that the inner lanes are pretty underused anyway.
Imagine something happening underground eventually. Imagine recapturing some of the air over the Massachusetts underpass so that the spaces between the west and east side of Connecticut Ave. between the north side of the Circle and Q Street (and just a little beyond) was recaptured into public space like space over 395 is captured (but not used successfully) by CCNV.
There are many more similar opportunities across the city, ranging from Herb Caudill's ideas about the sidewalks in teh Cleveland Park commercial district, to Dan Malouff's post about creating "Scott Square," or ideas for recreating Truxton Circle, etc.
by Richard Layman on Sep 22, 2012 8:28 am • link • report
by KadeKo on Sep 22, 2012 11:19 am • link • report
The Mall is meant to be something different from Bryant Park or Dupont Circle and that seems to get lost. It's meant to be a place of both awe and contemplation, as well as ahuge but purposive public gathering place. NPS is more about that stuff than any municalpl parks department and with all its cautiousness about change, I'm kindof glad of that.
New York is not a great example for DC, at least not Manhattan. The densities are so great that the few parks that don't work, like one I visited in Harlem a couple years ago are mostlythat way because they are in the rougher sections of neighbors that are changing and fairly marginal users (drug dealers, men cruising for sex, etc.) easily keep other uses from achieving domination. New York also has a history of civic engagement and philanthropy that DC cannot really approximate.
Franklin Square would be in better shape if the suburban congregations that do their do-gooding there looked at the poverty in their own backyard (they all seem to come from places with plenty of their own problems) and other steps were taken to regionalize the problem of homelessness. The one bright spot is the proliferation of food trucks there. Given the relatively small number of decent eateries nearby, it's changed the composition of users at least during mid-day. Putting a playground there has been floated but frankly you can find nice well equipped inner area playgrounds like Kennedy Park which no one uses and the homelessness is going to keep the usual advocates for a kids park away. Adult athletic uses like those in Potomac Park would be much more promising. A hotel might help, but I don't know that hotels do much to contribute to the use of parks elsewhere.
Freedom Plaza gets relatively little use mostly because the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue was basically a failure. It has wide sidewalks, great vistas, etc. but nothing to generate traffic on a consistent basis through the day. The few retail experiments came and went in the 90s. The work environments are 9 to 5 w/o generating foot traffic through the day (no doctor's offices and the like which do this). Some of the buildings are frankly ugly and bunker-like. It doesn't really move tourists where they want to go in the way they want to go. Penn Ave. is no longer the slum it was 50 years ago, but it now it's just pretty lifeless. The elites and plannerly types who redeveloped it near the burden, and having DC take over Freedom Park from NPS won't make much difference, although it would be nice if NPS planted some trees there.
by Rich on Sep 22, 2012 9:28 pm • link • report
Franklin Square is somewhat historic and there are a lot of people around lunch time, but as you said, DC is not NYC (a particular past time on this blog is to compare DC with other cities) culturally speaking, and after lunch time, ziiip, the population drastically decreases. We're still a very provincial city, and as you correctly point out, lack the numbers that NYC has. As for the underground, it was before my time, but I believe certain Metro stations, such as Dupont, used to have underground passageways or throughways (North South) and bathrooms. Not talking about the mini mall there in the 90s, but this would have been in the 80s and/or before. I'm not sure if this is correct, but I heard that Reagan closed it down. This passageway would have had bathrooms. Not sure why people allowed it to be closed down. Someone else would have to comment. But there are other metro stations that have successful undergrounds like Faragut west, though it is attached to a building above it. I'm not against an underground something or other getting going again, but why not start small, like re-open the throughways and yeah, the bathrooms too.
I don't get over to Freedom Plaza much, but it does seem to be pretty de-forested, I'd agree with you there.
by Jazzy on Sep 22, 2012 10:27 pm • link • report
Then again, the old Underground Club on M St. around 21st ? did well back in the 1990s.
Freedom Plaza is poorly designed and located too. And yes, PA Ave. proves many of the Jane Jacobs points, but in any case, it's not a central strip to daily Washington. When 7th St. was a shopping street (because of the original Centre Market at where the Nat. Archives was) it was different. At least when the FBI did tours, there were more people in that area.
WRT your comments about National Mall: exactly. My point in some other writings is that the parks that are truly "federal interest" like the National Mall should be delineated and NPS should run them and the parks that are really local serving could be redefined as local and a plan for local management and control be developed and executed.
E.g., Grant Circle or Sherman Circle really don't need to be federal. That's true for all of the Circles probably, e.g., what makes Lincoln Park, Stanton Park, Washington Circle, McPherson Square, Farragut Square, etc. "federal." Rock Creek Park could go either way. In any reasonable jurisdiction, it would be a locally controlled park. The Fort Circle Parks could be like a state park, therefore loca;, but if they wanted, NPS could make a case because of the Civil War and other national battlefields. Etc.
I mean National Mall and the parks along the Potomac yes. Lafayette Square yes. What else?
I argue that the city needs a comprehensive parks plan that addresses federal parks too, to address the possibility of catastrophic change and to have a plan to deal with it.
The best example is as state funding for parks has been cut back to the bone in many places, state parks have been closed, and local authorities had no standing plans to enable them to step up and move quickly when circumstances changed.
by Richard Layman on Sep 22, 2012 10:31 pm • link • report
I remember the first month I lived here (Sept. 1987) reading a dumb op ed in the Post lamenting that unlike NYC there weren't Korean grocers on every corner.
Queens and Brooklyn have very large populations as well, which supports similar kinds of operations.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/5867754208/
During the day, Manhattan has upwards of 4-6 _Million_ people, maybe more today. Back then, during the daytime, DC maybe had 1 million, but most of them live in the suburbs and don't venture out in the city during the day (e.g., a recent study of federal worker behavior in the SW area found that about 65% bring their lunch).
(It's the same reason why it's difficult to support local commercial districts and a wide array of retail at the neighborhood commercial district level. Hell, even NYC can't really do "a wide array of retail" except in regional serving districts, but they have lots of convenience retail--food mostly--in districts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.
by Richard Layman on Sep 22, 2012 10:37 pm • link • report
I haven't been by the IS food court in years. The FN one died. There's a sports club in the space now.
The space under Dupont is a left over streetcar tunnel.
by Richard Layman on Sep 22, 2012 10:39 pm • link • report
Yes, I meant Farragut North. International Square is gone?? Really? I don't think so...
by Jazzy on Sep 22, 2012 10:45 pm • link • report
by Jazzy on Sep 22, 2012 10:46 pm • link • report
by Richard Layman on Sep 23, 2012 10:06 am • link • report
by Jazzy on Sep 23, 2012 10:20 am • link • report
by cereal on Sep 23, 2012 10:37 am • link • report
And yet the DC Public Parks warehouse and bus parking lot continues to occupy half an entire city block between S and T behind the most active block of 14th NW. THAT facility could be relocated anywhere and the present grounds turned into an attraction and/or park much more successfully than the old Dupont streetcar passenger loading tunnels. The rears of the buildings facing 14th are original and have character.
Alas, the most common recommendation is to turn it into a parking lot for bar patrons.
If you're looking for a high-density, near to a Metro station public plaza in the middle of where people go, DC Public Parks already owns that one and is just misusing it in terms of present day.
by Tom Coumaris on Sep 23, 2012 11:06 am • link • report
by Tom Coumaris on Sep 23, 2012 11:21 am • link • report
There's a more practical consideration. How could DC (often short for Dysfunctional City) meet the financial and operational burdens of maintaining all that parkland? It's like the folks who would like to have a local prosecutor to supplant the US attorney without regard to the cost burden that such a move would put on the city's taxpayers. Oh, wait -- enact a commuter tax, that old panacea!
by Bob on Sep 23, 2012 1:28 pm • link • report
When I referred to screwing up wrt the NoMA plan, specifically I was referring to not thinking about creating a "square" at the northern entrance to the Metro or the southern entrance, and about recapturing the parking lot for the Woodies warehouse (I recommend doing that now, and building parking underneath, and trying to get a monetized easement to pay for it, but easements aren't monetizable in the same way that tax credits are.)
by Richard Layman on Sep 23, 2012 1:40 pm • link • report
by Tom Coumaris on Sep 23, 2012 1:58 pm • link • report
by Ginger on Sep 23, 2012 4:58 pm • link • report
That's all nice and everything, but it doesn't explain why the NPS can't regularly empty the trash cans overflowing with dog shit from Lincoln Park. Is that some sort of special service that non-DC residents demand?
How could DC (often short for Dysfunctional City) meet the financial and operational burdens of maintaining all that parkland?
Ah, yes. "Dysfunctional City" (did you just make that up? clever!) ... Given the way the city is gentrifying, my guess is control of the parks could be a net money-maker for the city, not a drain.
by oboe on Sep 23, 2012 7:23 pm • link • report
I have seen people playing croquet in Logan Circle. You also have to think about all the people who go camping in National Parks and the tent stakes that they hammer into the ground. If it is a real rule, it is only selectively enforced.
As for staging some kind of protest to reclaim parkland in DC, I think it would be much better to actually get some kind of autonomy over our own affairs. Until we can actually bring in money like every other state in the country, I think it is folly to saddle ourselves with more budgetary responsibility. I acknowledge that parks are important aspect of the city, but you can't improve what you can't pay for.
by Josh on Sep 24, 2012 8:33 am • link • report
by lou on Sep 24, 2012 5:06 pm • link • report
by Dave Banick on Sep 27, 2012 5:09 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Sep 27, 2012 7:24 pm • link • report
by MLD on Sep 28, 2012 8:03 am • link • report
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