The transformative power of the public realm
A conversation with Mitchell Silver, New York City Parks Commissioner
Mitchell Silver’s accomplishments are impressive. A planner by training, he oversees management, planning and operations of New York City’s nearly 30,000 acres of parkland, which includes parks, playgrounds, beaches, marinas, recreation centers, wilderness areas and other assets. As the planning director in Raleigh, North Carolina, he led the comprehensive planning process and a rewriting of development code to create a more vibrant city. He is one of the nation’s most celebrated urban thinkers, lecturing and writing nationally on a variety of topics. Reimagining the Civic Commons was lucky enough to host Commissioner Silver at our Akron Civic Commons Studio in 2017, and we caught up with him again this summer to talk about delivering trust, equity and a sense of care through our shared civic assets.
Q: Right now, trust between people is declining, social isolation is increasing and we spend less time with people who are different from ourselves, do you see any positive examples of socioeconomic mixing and trust being fostered? Where and how?
A: Across the country, particularly in places that already have a demographic mix in their population, different kinds of people are meeting up in public spaces for various events. That’s what I love about public spaces — they are democratic and are intended to draw people together for large and small gatherings. Whether you’re in a city or a rural area, these public spaces allow different cultures to come together, at different festivals and events, and allow different people to actually meet.
These public places are important for every community, because in these places you can get to know people better as you spend time with them and socialize with them. This starts to break down the distrust and the stereotypes that people may have, because everyone wants to have a good time. And having a good time can be done through food, through music, through volunteering efforts, through events for children and sports — any kind of gathering that takes place in public space. Our public spaces provide a platform on which to build trust, to build relationships, and to connect as a community.
Q: How do you define equity, and how do you deliver it through parks and public places?
A: I use one word to define equity: fairness. From my perspective, equity means being fair. People in charge of public space need to ask themselves: are you distributing your resources in a fair way? Are you distributing your capital dollars in a fair way? Are you treating all the parks in your parks system fairly?
People have a good way of measuring fairness. If I’m putting in my tax dollars into the general fund and only one section of the city is getting the resources, that’s not fair. If I’m waiting 20 years for my park to be improved, and some other neighborhood gets a new park or second wave of investment in a ten-year period, that’s not fair. In my department, we work to make sure that all parks are treated fairly and communities get their fair share of resources. We work to ensure that all parks in the city are treated the same.
And, fairness is easy to measure. We do it a couple of ways. First, every year we look at how much we’ve invested in our park system. We use metrics to evaluate investments depending upon the size of the park. With a smaller park or playground, we look at parks that have received less than $250,000 over 20 years and evaluate those for investment first. For larger parks we tend to use a larger dollar value. We just look at our capital program to see where we’ve invested and where we have not invested. Doing this makes it easy to determine where you’ve invested your money over time — and shows whether resources and effort are being fairly delivered.
We also try to mobilize volunteers from the local community. Our parks department does great work, but we’ve found that parks with organized volunteers do better than those without. I’m not advocating that every park needs a friends group, but when we do have one in a neighborhood, we go out of our way to support them, because we’re looking for that level of care. We want maintain our parks, but we also want care for the too. Having a fair system means we also want the local community to engage with us to actively care for that park.
Q: Some people worry that creating better public places will lead to displacement of existing residents. How do you overcome that concern?
A: First, the alternative is to do nothing for our parks. And for us, doing nothing means having a park that is not improved. That means that communities, seniors, children do not have a park that they can use to its fullest potential. We believe that’s not fair.
Second, from our perspective, we have not seen that park improvements necessarily lead to gentrification. Does it happen in some locations? Yes, in some places like the High Line, it has happened. But in most neighborhoods, we have not seen park improvements lead to gentrification. When your default is to do nothing and keep parks in poor condition, I find that unacceptable.
The city also has other tools at their disposal to deal with the larger effects of gentrification, such as creating more affordable housing or providing lawyers to people to deal with abusive landlords. We have also found that having an unimproved park actually decreases property value. Not having a quality park doesn’t mean children stop playing, it means that children are going to go somewhere else to have fun. We’ve seen other cities where they take down a basketball court because there was just one incident. That park, that playground, that basketball court have now been taken offline, and where are kids and neighbors going to go? These are public spaces where people connect, where they get healthy, where they come together as a family or a community for sports and other events. And to say we’re going to keep a park in poor condition sends a message to that community that you don’t really matter. That’s not a message I want to send.
Q: While the creation of a big new park, trail or library often makes the headlines, most cities have hundreds of existing public assets that need attention and investment. How are you generating excitement and investment in New York City’s existing buildings and landscapes, places that may be viewed as liabilities rather than assets?
A: Here in the City of New York, I can tell you that sometimes there are lines going around the block when a new park opens. To the local neighborhood, it really matters. Particularly to underserved communities — neighbors will thank you, and tell you the park is their “staycation,” this is where they take their kids because they can’t afford to go to upstate New York or to the beach. For these residents, the local park really matters.
Take the case of New York’s Grand Avenue playground. This is a playground that was taken offline because of the drinking and gambling that would occur there. Most community members didn’t use it because they didn’t feel safe. When we decided to invest in the park, we closed the park off during construction and worked with local community members to push out the bad activity. When the park re-opened, the line was around the block and people were saying, “Thank you, we now have a park.” So while this park existed for a long time on paper, the community didn’t have access to it. And now they have this space that they can enjoy.
The Van Alst Playground in Queens is one of the first Community Parks Initiative parks that we opened. It is now rated the best playground in the Astoria neighborhood by parents, by guardians, by everyone. These park openings don’t make headlines, but in the local community, there’s a buzz. It’s quite a transformation. When I went to the opening of the McDonald Park Playground in Staten Island, the transformation was such that community members asked me after our improvements if we had acquired more land. We hadn’t of course; we’d just made it a great public space. There happens to be a nursing home across the street from the park, and I told staff I wanted them to redesign the park to create a garden with a seating area because these seniors did not have access to outdoor space. And when I was there recently, a woman came up and hugged me. She now had a place where her daughter could visit with her outside, and where her grandkids could play basketball nearby. Again, these parks don’t necessarily make headlines, but when we get smiles and children laughing and hugs, that’s what matters.
Q: One principle for Reimagining the Civic Commons is to design, manage and operate assets as a portfolio. Can you talk to us about how you are managing parks and public places as a system, rather than as individual assets or even asset classes?
A: I often say that I believe the parks department should be the Department of Fun, Health and Happiness. And I embrace this principle in our park design, and also in how we manage and program our spaces. Sometimes, you can design a park where it just programs itself, but other times you need to help program it, to have outdoor fitness classes, engage kids, have music — all those events that really bring the public into the space. To me, that is part of managing the space well.
When we design a park, we have public meetings because we want to hear from the local community. We want to make sure we are designing it right to fit the neighborhood’s demographics and age range. But in terms of operating a park, remaining connected to the neighborhood is also key. Luckily our budget office makes sure that as we increase park space, we get additional staff to keep pace with our growing portfolio.
We don’t just manage an individual park. We look at the entire system. We make sure our staff allocation is properly distributed across the system, so we know we have the right size crew to take care of our parks. Without getting too technical, we have fixed posts, which means people that stay in parks all the time, and we also have mobile crews who travel and take care of multiple parks in a district. We hired a chief operating officer to make sure that our standards across the board are the same, so that all parks are cared for equally, whether a park is in high-priced Manhattan or somewhere else like central Brooklyn. We are now running the Parks Department as one agency, not five separate borough parks departments.
The focus for us is moving from “maintenance” to “care.” Care is that extra effort of love and attention that a park needs. So that anyone can walk into a park and see it and say, “Wow, somebody cares!” What I don’t want is someone going to a park and saying, “Oh my goodness, look at that electrical box on the light pole. It’s open with wires hanging down. Does anybody care?” Care means paying attention to the details. Cleaning park bathrooms once or twice a day is not enough. People should go into bathrooms once every hour to make sure the toilet paper is there and that the soap dispensers are filled and that it smells good. That’s the difference between maintenance and care.
This is a small example, but it made a difference: I would walk into some of our park buildings and the smell of harsh chemicals and ammonia would knock me off my feet. We had a working team come together to figure out the problem and we set out to find the most effective and healthy cleaning products. Now we use these products citywide. That’s an example of thinking about your entire system as a system, and not as separate, isolated parts.
Q: Creating a “seamless public realm” requires collaboration across public sector departments. Do you have a good example of this cross-department work that is breaking down silos? How did you make it happen?
A: Because I’m a planner, I had a difficult time just planning for parks, because parks do not sit in isolation. They’re connected to sidewalks and streets and retail. When I started looking at the parks, I began to think about them as public space. Parks are green, yes, but they are also a public space. When we looked at the entire city, we realized that parks represent 14 percent of the city’s footprint, and that streets and sidewalks represent 26 percent of the city’s footprint. Combined, these places make up 40 percent of New York City — and it is all public space!
Unfortunately, parks and street were historically planned and managed separately by different agencies, even though the average citizen does not know or care when they are walking on Parks property or property managed by the Parks Department or the Department of Transportation.
Our goal is to create a seamless public realm in the city. Parks, streets and sidewalks are connected and owned by the city. We don’t have to acquire more land, we just have to be smarter about how we program this connected land. Our work on a seamless public realm gave birth to the program we call “Parks Without Borders.” Our charter says that the Parks Department has jurisdiction of the park and the sidewalk adjacent to the park, so I told my staff that from now on sidewalks will be considered “outer parks.” And in some cases, we’re now reclaiming streets as well.
Today in New York, the Department of City Planning, the Department of Environmental Protection (New York’s water and sewer department), the Department of Transportation and the Parks Department serve on a “Public Realm Team” to reimagine how we can go beyond the border of the park, out to the sidewalk and into the street. We have many cases where the Department of Transportation will close a street to connect a square and a park, all in order to increase the park space.
Seward Park is one of our best examples. The park was just a little triangle of space with some monuments, and nearby was a short street that no one really used. The Department of Transportation agreed to give us the little street, and we’re going to paint it and have chairs. It is now connected to the square and the monument, which formerly just hosted the pigeons. We’re lowering the fence of Seward Park and opening up all this city-owned land that was not being used — transforming what I call “underperforming asphalt.” We are connecting the street, the sidewalk, a square, and a park at no cost to the city, except the capital budget to improve it.
What I really want to communicate to every city is that they, too, can reimagine their public realm. Most cities are bad land managers and don’t realize how much public property they own. Show me your sidewalk, show me a street and I will show you a park, a place that can be painted in a very inexpensive way. When you work across departments and understand it’s the public’s public realm and not the agency’s public realm, magic can happen at a very low cost.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration between The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation and local partners.
