Urban Park Leaders, Advocates Gather For Groundbreaking Conference

Urban parks are underappreciated and underfunded in many United States cities, although many cities have found ways to redevelop industrial and other sites into new urban parks. In Boston, an old landfill has been converted into soccer fields and walking paths for that city's Millennium Park. A garbage-dump on an island off Boston has been transformed into green space. And the city plans to build 30 acres of parks above a newly constructed, underground highway known to most of the nation as "the Big Dig."

"New York City has added park space by converting abandoned waterfront piers and wharves into parkland. Officials there are also building a 1.5-mile-long park on what was once an elevated freight line, 30 feet above the ground. The city is paying for the $180 million project mostly with money raised by a private group.

'Most of the older cities in the country face the same problems as New York,' said Adrian Benepe, that city's commissioner of parks. 'There isn't a lot of empty space, and if there is, it's expensive to acquire...Cities have to look at converting abandoned industrial areas.'"

Parks are for people, and other issues covered included how to make or remake our cities using new and existing parks. "Parks need to be located where people are, and housing needs to be located near parks," said Peter Harnik, of the the Trust for Public Land, in a speech at the conference.