Shifting Discourses in Landscape Exploring the Value of Parks in New York City
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U H P H 2 0 1 6 I c o n s : T h e M a k i n g , M e a n i n g a n d U n d o i n g o f U r b a n I c o n s a n d I c o n i c C i t i e s | 198 Shifting Discourses in Landscape Exploring the value of parks in New York City Philip Hutchinson University of Canberra [email protected] Dr Andrew Mackenzie University of Canberra [email protected] Urban parks are valued by residents and tourists alike as they are a pleasant juxtaposition from the intensity of the surrounding city. But parks haven’t necessarily been considered in the same economic or political terms as other parts of the city. In recent years, the potential of urban landscapes to contribute to the economic health and vibrancy of the city has become more apparent to the political elite in the higher profile parks such as New York City’s High Line Project. However, some aspects of the political role that urban parks play still have not been recognised. Contrary to the economic value that has been attributed to some other high profile parks in New York City, the cost of Freshkills Park is enormous and this suggests that there are other political narratives associated with the closure of the landfill and the creation of the Park. That is, the Park offers some form of political value to the New York City administration. This paper situates the history of Freshkills Park in recent political and environmental events that have impacted New York City. The closure of the Fresh Kills landfill and associated waste management problems for the city, the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the 2012 Superstorm Sandy, are events that reveal the political positioning of Freshkills Park. Not only does this raise the profile of the Park in the minds of the residents of New York City, it also increases the Park’s relevance to the political elite by revealing some of the issues that are impacting the welfare of the city. By examining the relationship between these events and conception of the Park, this paper considers the value of Freshkills Park as a political object in the city, and thereby, offers a different conception of the role and value of landscape in a modern city. Keywords: Landscape architecture; Freshkills Park; Biopolitics U H P H 2 0 1 6 I c o n s : T h e M a k i n g , M e a n i n g a n d U n d o i n g o f U r b a n I c o n s a n d I c o n i c C i t i e s | 199 Introduction New York City (NYC) is one of the world’s most vibrant and dense cities. Land is expensive, creating an interesting relationship between parks and the city. In one sense, the real estate value of the land creates intense pressure to use land productively; but, the intensity of the land use means that parks are more valued as a temporarily escape from the intensity of the city. Currently, twenty-five percent or 52,000 acres of land in NYC is dedicated to parks, reflecting the commitment that recent administrations have made to parks. Previous NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg had committed to the goal that by 2030 every New Yorker will live within a 10 minute walk of a park (Bloomberg 2011, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation 2014: 1). This has been reiterated by the current de Blasio administration (New York City Office of the Mayor 2014). Attitudes to parks in NYC are rooted in iconic parks such as Central Park and Prospect Park that encapsulate a certain romantic discourse of landscape design. Recent additions to the assemblage of parks in NYC, such as the High Line, have also shown how parks can contribute significantly to the economic welfare of the city. The economic benefit of parks to the city cannot be the only measure of value from a political administration perspective. Other measures that determine the value of parks include the opportunity for exercise, community interaction and ecological functions (New York City Office of the Mayor 2014, 34). But when the full opportunity cost of building and maintaining parks is taken into consideration, the gap between the cost of parks and the value to the community appears a little incongruent. This paper argues that this gap can be explained through the political capital that is gained from parks, and this becomes evident by examining the commissioning and development of Freshkills Park. Twentieth Century Account of NYC parks One of the primary roles of Central Park and other early parks in New York was to provide a space that had an “overall impression of tranquilly beautiful and ruggedly Picturesque rural scenery” (Rogers 2001, 339), that provided the “ best practicable means of healthful recreation for the inhabitants of all classes” (Olmsted Sr 1973, 44). Parks were situated within prosaic notions of experiencing ‘nature’ for the enlightened middle class. From these romantic beginnings, the role of parks evolved and by the early twentieth century, functional requirements of parks in NYC took precedence. Social reformers of the Progressive Era (1890-1920), and later Robert Moses, head of the city's Parks Department from 1933, promoted parks for specific recreational activities such as swimming pools, bowling, croquet and tennis (Rogers 2007). The progressive era approach to parks was to see them as spaces in which organised activities could be provided for a population that now had more leisure time than ever before (Cranz 1982). However valuable parks became as a recreation resource, they were not immune from funding cuts. By the 1960s, the wholesale middle- class flight from the inner city, made it more difficult to justify park funding(Cranz 1982). This was exacerbated during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. As the city was almost bankrupt, spending money on parks was a low if not non-existent priority (Serazio 2010). Central Park, among others, fell into decline as a result. Any perceived benefits of living near the Park were eroded by the rise in criminal and antisocial activity in the park itself. It was a place into which few were willing to venture (Rogers 2007, Vanderkam 2011: 1). Figure 1 shows the degree to which the condition of the park deteriorated as infrastructure was neglected. U H P H 2 0 1 6 I c o n s : T h e M a k i n g , M e a n i n g a n d U n d o i n g o f U r b a n I c o n s a n d I c o n i c C i t i e s | 200 Figure 1: Central Park Meadows in the mid-1970s. The meadows were bare, compacted and with standing water because of the collapsed drainage system. (Source: Rogers, E. B. (2007). "Robert Moses and the Transformation of Central Park." Site Lines: A Journal of Place 3(Fall): 3-12.) Work to restore some of Central Park’s original character did not gain traction until NYC Park’s Commissioner Gordon J. Davis and Founder of the Park conservancy Elizabeth Barlow Rogers were able to provide an alternative private funding source to state revenue (Vanderkam 2011: 2). It was only through the creation in the 1980s of the not-for-profit Central Park Conservancy that Central Park could be restored (Vanderkam 2011: 2). Funded privately through donations, the capital raised to maintain Central Park has given a financial measure of the value of Central Park to New Yorkers. Since then, funding has largely been secured for Central Park by private contributions. The Central Park Conservancy raises approximately 75percent of the funding for the Park’s annual funding (Central Park Conservancy 2015), of which around 85 percent is private funding that comes from people living within ten minute walk of the Park, firmly establishing a social and economic co- dependency between the Park’s fortunes and the residents who benefit (Vanderkam 2011: 1). U H P H 2 0 1 6 I c o n s : T h e M a k i n g , M e a n i n g a n d U n d o i n g o f U r b a n I c o n s a n d I c o n i c C i t i e s | 201 Figure 2: The High Line, New York City Relatively free of visitors on this day, the High Line is the most visited park in North America, attracting 600,000 visitors per acre per year. (Source: Photo by Philip Hutchinson, 10 May 2014.) More recently parks have been viewed as opportunities for economic revitalisation and a number of interesting projects have emerged based on reclamation of post-industrial sites (Kirkwood 2001). The Bloomberg administration was particularly active in creating a number of other high profile developments in the city including High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island. The High Line for example is a ‘linear park’ created on the remains of a disused, elevated goods railway line ten metres above street level on the western shore of Manhattan Island (see Figure 2). The economic benefits of the project have been extraordinary and the west side of Manhattan has been transformed from a “once-gritty, truck-filled area” into an precinct “now dominated by upscale fashion retailers, art galleries and restaurants” (Gratz 2010, xxxv).