forum issue 5 : parks

edited by alan a loomis and lize mogel

With summer upon us, and the outdoors beckoning, the Forum turns its attention to parks and recreational landscapes in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Through a series of essays, projects, and case studies, we outline the social/political/economic/ecological dimensions of open space in the city. Funded in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Cultural Affairs Department.

from paradise to parking lot by lawrence culver

The rise of modern Los Angeles since the late nineteenth century has been inextricably connected to its reputation as a place of recreation. It might seem likely that a city sold as the playground of the world, with an economy and identity so closely linked to fun in the sun, would ensure the preservation of beaches and open space, and create urban parks as recreational amenities. Such was not the case. The result was a city and region with less parkland than almost any other major metropolitan area. The history of parks in Los Angeles can tell us much about the history of the city, how the city was planned, what residents wanted the city to be, and how issues of race and class have played out in geographic and social space.

As cities in the American West grew, they gradually developed park systems similar to those of eastern cities. In some western cities, politicians and promoters realized that residents and tourists might be as enamored by surrounding scenery as by green spaces in the cities themselves. One example was Denver, which began buying tracts of land in the Rocky Mountains in the 1910s, creating a system of "Denver Mountain Parks." In San Diego, the development of an urban park system was accompanied by the purchase of vast tracts of desert and mountain landscapes in the 1920s and 1930s. These were ultimately incorporated as Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. [1]

The early growth of modern Los Angeles was not accompanied by similar park development, or purchases of open land. One reason for this was the city"s rapid expansion. What had been a town of barely 11,000 people in 1880 was a city of 1.2 million people by 1930, and 2.4 million by 1960. Nevertheless, rapid growth was not the only reason Los Angeles lagged in park development. Modern Los Angeles was conceived to be the exact opposite of eastern cities, with their teeming slums and congested downtowns. Beyond selling fertile land, sunshine, and a balmy climate, Los Angeles sold a lifestyle. This was to be a place where retirees could enjoy an old age of leisure, and families might live in a bungalow surrounded by a garden and citrus trees rather that on an isolated farm or in a crowded tenement.

Dispersed communities were connected by Henry Huntington"s Pacific Electric interurban train system, allowing the development of a sprawling, suburbanized landscape, neither city nor country, which seemed to combine the best qualities of both. The automobile only accelerated this process, and also allowed residents to escape the city for recreation. The car, like the bungalow and the citrus orchard, became an essential component of the projected Los Angeles lifestyle. Los Angeles itself was a park, a city in a garden. It was thought that this new type of city would have no need for an elaborate park system. Residents could simply hop in their cars and ride to the beach, or out into open countryside. At home, they could enjoy their own yards and gardens. Civic leaders ignored the fact that continued growth would undermine this urban Eden, and that many residents were either excluded from it or lacked the resources to enjoy it.

Critics of Los Angeles have condemned it as the epitome of unplanned sprawl. Nothing could be further from the truth. Los Angeles was intricately planned. The city was placed under a comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1908, the first in the nation. New York City would not pass a similar ordinance for another eight years. The 1908 ordinance, and others that followed, delineated the city into different areas. Industry was separated from recreation, and whites from nonwhites. The Westside was classified as "higher class" residential only, with some allowances for commercial establishments. A linear swath of south Los Angeles, adjacent to the LA River, was classified as industrial. "Residential only," in reality, meant white, Anglo Saxon and usually Protestant only, and realtors and white homeowners associations maintained this color line. [2]

In contrast to its careful zoning and planning in other areas, Los Angeles only haphazardly accumulated a parks system. The first public space in Los Angeles was the Plaza, created when the pueblo was founded in 1781. Though the settlement had to be relocated due to flooding, a space for the Plaza remained at the pueblo"s center. Several other city parks were carved out of unsold communal pueblo lands in the late nineteenth century. These included Pershing Square and Elysian Park, then the largest park in the city, which was created from several hundred acres of hilly terrain north of downtown. [3]

Other early parks were given as donations. By far the most significant of these came in 1896, when local magnate Griffith J. Griffith deeded 3,500-acre Griffith Park ñ the largest urban park in the nation ñ to the city in perpetuity. The response of local political leaders, however, was underwhelming. The new park lay outside city limits and far from streetcar lines, surrounded by large expanses of undeveloped land. Moreover, Griffith was hardly an ideal philanthropist. In 1903 he shot his wife in a drunken rage, convinced she intended to use his fortune to fund Catholic schemes for global domination. She survived, but the city did not accept the $700,000 Griffith had set aside for the park"s improvement until after his death in 1919. [4]

Los Angeles did not strive to secure parkland, but it excelled in another area of recreation. In 1904 the city was the first in the nation to create a Department of Playgrounds. This was a landmark in the national Playgrounds Movement, a reform effort of the Progressive Era, which aimed to provide children ñ particularly urban, immigrant children ñ with recreational spaces where they could exercise and socialize, and be "Americanized" in the process. As with city planners who divided LA by race and separated residential and industrial areas, the Playground Department took as its mission the separation of spaces for safe, productive play, removed from the dangers of urban life. For its personnel, children"s play was serious business. This was reflected in a motto emblazoned on some of its publications: "The test of whether a civilization will live or die is the way it spends its leisure." [5]

Though the city led the nation in playground policy, it consistently lagged in the acquisition and development of parkland. Parks were treated as an afterthought in comparison to streets or sewers. City and county officials tried to impose a system, similar to ones in some other cities, to force subdividers to devote land for parks and playgrounds. Many developers simply refused. In coastal areas, some developers asserted that the beach was the only recreational space future residents would need. Others offered land for parks, but demanded they be ornamental only, precluding recreational areas or playgrounds that might draw "undesirables."

Aside from these limited efforts, the city of Los Angeles did little to alleviate its parks shortage, even though a succession of studies and surveys demonstrated the growing problem. Perhaps the single most significant of these reports was the 1930 Olmstead ñBartholomew plan, "Parks, Playgrounds and Beaches for the Los Angeles Region." Its authors called for the creation of vast urban parks, parkways, beach recreation areas, scenic drives, and a variety of other amenities which, if enacted, would have created a very different city and region from the one that came to be. Yet the authors did not propose the construction of some fanciful arcadia. They planned for a vast urban area, complete with a network of traffic arteries that foreshadowed later freeways. The report pointedly gave primary consideration to lower-income residents, who made up a majority of the city"s population, and had less leisure time and available recreational space than the more affluent. Nevertheless, fears about taxes, the plan"s cost, and the worsening Depression prevented its adoption. The report was shelved without even being released to the public, and remained little-known until rediscovered by historians and urban planners. [6]

The ordinances that governed Los Angeles city parks, playgrounds, and other recreational areas in the early twentieth century made no reference to race. Indeed, it appears that these recreational areas were initially integrated, though not necessarily always welcoming. By the time the 1920s arrived, however, matters had changed. All city pools were segregated. Revealing swimming attire, and the sharing of public locker rooms and showers, permitted a degree of interracial physical intimacy that a significant number of whites found troubling. [7]

Yet pools were just one place where people of different races might swim together. A far larger area of contention was 75-mile coastline of Los Angeles County. Local beaches were an important tourist attraction, and the premier recreational amenity for the entire region. In 1928, the Department of Playgrounds estimated that on summer weekends half a million people converged at area beaches ñ a figure equivalent to 25% of the county"s total population. Because of this, the city and county of Los Angeles began purchasing and managing beaches to ensure public access. [8]

All taxpayers in Los Angeles County paid for beach purchases and maintenance. African Americans, however, were banned from almost all beaches in Los Angeles County. Worse yet, they were forced to pay taxes to buy up even more beach land that would prohibit them. This segregation appears to have begun earlier, whether through explicit ordinance or enforced by hostile white beachgoers and local police. The same tactics served to keep some parks effectively white-only. [9]

At one time, the only beach African-Americans could visit was Bruce"s Beach, a black-owned resort area in Manhattan Beach. In 1924, city officials concerned about the resort"s growing popularity condemned it. Another African-American beach, called the "Inkwell," was designated that same year in Santa Monica. It lay at the terminus of Pico Boulevard, and ran only the width of the street. [10]

African-Americans fought back against the restriction of beaches and swimming pools. Individuals filed court cases, and the NAACP even organized a "swim in." At both beaches and pools, this resulted in the abandonment of explicitly segregationist policies in the 1930s. De facto segregation, however, would continue for decades more. Restrictive housing covenants also banned nonwhites from some area beaches, and as of 2003 some Malibu homeowners were still attempting to exclude all nonresidents, even though all California beaches are public under state law. [11]

The segregation of recreational areas is certainly the most obvious example of racial bias in the development of parks and recreation in Los Angeles. Yet the lack of funding for recreational spaces and amenities in nonwhite areas of the city also functioned as a pernicious form of fiscal discrimination. In Latino East LA, residents complained of limited parks and a shortage of playgrounds. In Watts, requests for more parks, playgrounds, and a community pool were repeatedly rebuffed.

As the city grew, and as racial housing restrictions were overturned by the Supreme Court in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the racial and ethnic geography of Los Angeles changed. Many Jews moved from the Boyle Heights neighborhood east of downtown to the Westside. White families moved in huge numbers to new subdivisions spreading across the floor of the San Fernando Valley. Parks that had once served whites were now increasingly used by African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, and drew the working class and poor as well. White civic concern for these parks suffered accordingly.

One example was Pershing Square, which stood at the heart of the downtown financial district. Its fountain and lush landscaping made it a favorite lunchtime gathering place for white-collar workers. As downtown declined, however, Pershing Square also lost its luster. The park became a focus of LAPD surveillance due to its popularity as a place for activists to make speeches and stage protests, and also as a covert meeting place for gay men. The city passed ordinances banning alcohol and vagrants, and ultimately gouged out the park in the 1950s, leaving only a sparse garnish of greenery atop a subterranean parking structure. The parking was intended for predominantly white professionals, and the removal of trees and foliage made it easier to police the park. It also made Pershing Square a far less pleasant place to linger. The Department of Recreation and Parks described the new design as a "see-through, walk-through park." [12]

Other parks were also sacrificed for construction projects and urban development. Wilshire Boulevard was extended directly through MacArthur Park. Freeways sliced off the edges of Griffith Park. In Elysian Park, the construction of the Pasadena Freeway created tunnels and roadcuts which destroyed parkland, and split the park in two. Another section of the park was sacrificed for the Golden State Freeway. More acreage was lost to LAPD facilities and Dodger Stadium. In Exposition Park, the 1932 Olympic Coliseum, and later the Los Angeles Sports Arena and the expansion of the Natural History Museum, occupied ever-larger swaths of shrinking park space. [13]

There were geographic and monetary reasons to justify each of these construction projects. Yet it is an undeniable fact that by the time some of these projects began, many Anglos were moving away from downtown. The portion of Elysian Park cut off by freeway construction lay near Chinatown, and residential neighborhoods surrounding the rest of the park were increasingly Latino. Sacrificing portions of these parks was undoubtedly made far easier by the fact that so many of the people who depended on them for their recreation were no longer Anglo.

The Civil Rights Movement brought heightened power and aspirations to people of color and the poor in Los Angeles. Nonwhite areas did not receive large expansions of parkland, but some under-served areas did receive new community centers, pools, and expanded recreational programs. Unfortunately, some of the gains made in the 1950s and 1960s proved illusory, for subsequent events resulted in the gutting of park funding. The late 1960s saw the advent of new youth gangs and rising crime, and assaults and murders in parks frightened away residents, making them less interested in creating more park space. Though Los Angeles voters had approved park bond measures in the past, a proposed measure in 1971 was voted down. [14]

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which rolled back property taxes. The ballot measure proved popular among homeowners during an economic downturn. As a result, however, state, county, and city governments slashed spending. The LA park budget was gutted. Parks could not compete with law enforcement, education, and medical care for scarce government funds. [15]

Unsurprisingly, parks and recreation programs in poorer areas were devastated. Recreation centers and pools were closed. As the 1980s progressed, some parks were left derelict, abandoned by more affluent whites as terra incognita purportedly inhabited only by the homeless, drug dealers, and gang members. James Hadaway, director of the Department of Recreation and Parks, publicly stated that half of the city"s parks were located in gang territories. A survey found that half of city residents were afraid to enter parks in their own neighborhoods. [16]

Park staff in more affluent areas worked to maintain programs and facilities by raising fees and soliciting donations from their surrounding neighborhoods. "Quimby" funds, which assessed fees on certain construction projects, provided some park funding, but primarily benefited the Westside, where much more residential construction took place. A 1983 study demonstrated this growing "recreation gap." It found that recreation centers in middle class and affluent neighborhoods, despite cuts, had 59% more staff, were able to provide 74% more hours of classes per week, and served 123% more children and adolescents than those in poor areas. [17]

Much of the expansion of parkland that did come after 1970 was not in the form of traditional parks, but instead in the form of "open space." Tracts of undeveloped land, particularly in the Santa Monica Mountains, were set aside as natural areas to preserve habitat and provide hiking trails. Unfortunately, the state funding system which provided money for the acquisition of land for urban parks or open space often pitted advocates of one against the other. Open space proponents affiliated with environmental advocacy groups often proved more adept at securing these "Prop K" funds. Some proponents of open space also proved disinterested in the plight of poor, immigrant communities in Los Angeles, which lacked even small parks, and received marginal benefits from open space acquisitions in the Santa Monicas. [18]

Despite all the problems apparent by the end of the twentieth century, there are some signs of hope. A diverse coalition of community activists, environmentalists, and planners helped secure the purchase of the "Cornfield," an area adjacent to Chinatown which had been slated for warehouse development, but will instead serve as a community park. A similar effort at Taylor Yard preserved another tract near the Los Angeles River. Likewise, supporters of park development fought back an effort to construct a power plant in the Baldwin Hills, which may eventually become a large oasis of urban open space and parkland to rival Griffith Park. [19]

A project such as the greening of the Los Angeles River seems especially promising. The river winds though neighborhoods that vary economically and racially. It cannot return to a fully natural state, but the river could offer large, linear swaths of open space for walking and bike trails. Community recreation centers, playgrounds, and playing fields could also be located alongside a reborn Los Angeles River, alleviating environmental and societal woes simultaneously.

Rejuvenating the river, or securing more urban parkland or open space, will never make Los Angeles again the edenic garden its boosters once proclaimed it to be. That past, such as it ever existed at all, is irrecoverable. Nor will any future plan completely alleviate the history of neglect and exclusion which has so long been a hallmark of park and recreation planning and policy in Los Angeles. It could, however, offer a better future for all of its citizens, rather than the limited prospects the city offered to so many in the twentieth century.

Notes

[1] William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 184-85; Diana Elaine Lindsay, Our Historic Desert: The Story of the Anza-Borrego Desert (San Diego: Copley Books, 1973), 86-97.

[2] Becky M. Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 50; Leonard Pitt and Dale Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z: An Encyclopedia of the City and County (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 93.

[3] Al Goldfarb, 100 Years of Recreation and Parks (Los Angeles: Recreation and Parks Department, 1988), 7; Mary Katherine Gibson, "The Changing Conception of the Urban Park in America: The City of Los Angeles as a Case Study" (M.A. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977), 29.

[4] Gibson, "Changing Conception of the Urban Park in America," 29-32. Griffith published a work arguing for the value of urban parks and bemoaning the condition of his gift to the city. See Griffith J. Griffith, Parks, Boulevards, and Playgrounds (Los Angeles: Prison Reform League, 1910). Rare Book Collection, Huntington Library.

[5] George Hjelte, The Development of a City"s Public Recreation Service, 1904-1962 (Los Angeles: Public Service Publications, 1978); "Report, 1930-32," City of Los Angeles Department of Playground and Recreation. Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA. For the history of urban planning and zoning in Los Angeles, see Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), and Hise, ""Nature"s Workshop": Industry and Urban Expansion in Southern California, 1900-1950," Journal of Historical Geography 27: 1 (2001): 74-92.

[6] The plan is reprinted in its entirety in Greg Hise and William Deverell, Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmstead-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Mike Davis also analyzes the plan in Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 61-67.

[7] Andre Keil, "Swimming at the Park Pool: A History of Aquatics in the City of Los Angeles" (Los Angeles: Department of Recreation and Parks, 1994), 9; "Annual Report of the Board of Park Commissioners," City of Los Angeles, 1928. Special Collections, UCLA; Los Angeles City Council Minutes, July 7, 1927, Los Angeles City Archives.

[8] Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z, 41-42; beach attendance figure from "Annual Report of the Department of Playground and Recreation, City of Los Angeles," 1928, 15. "Old Department History," Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks Archives.

[9] Charlotta Bass, Forty Years: Memoirs from the Pages of a Newspaper (Los Angeles: Charlotta Bass, 1960),55; 69. Bass was editor of the California Eagle, one of the city"s two major African-American newspapers. Douglas Flamming Interview, October 31, 2002. Professor Flamming, an historian at Georgia Tech, is currently completing a book on the history of African Americans in Los Angeles, A World to Gain: African Americans and the Making of Los Angeles, 1890-1940.

[10] Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2002, "Resort Was an Oasis for Blacks Until Racism Drove Them Out"; Flamming Interview.

[11] Flamming Interview; New York Times, 25 August 2002, "Owners of Malibu Mansions Cry, "This Sand Is My Sand."

[12] "Pershing Square Park." Histories ñ P. Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks Archives. Also see William McClung, Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 142-153.

[13] Many of these construction projects are discussed in the minutes of the Los Angeles City Council. Concise histories of the major parks in the region can be found in Pitt and Pitt, Los Angeles A to Z. Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2002, "Park"s Paths Less Traveled" discusses the decline of Elysian Park, and its current state of disrepair.

[14] Letters from citizens concerned about crime in Los Angeles parks, as well as government reports on violent crimes in county parks, can be found in the Kenneth Hahn Collection, Huntington Library.

[15] For an analysis of Proposition 13, see "The Spirit of 13," chapter in Peter Schrag, Paradise Lost: California"s Experience, America"s Future (New York: The New Press, 1998).

[16] Hit by the same budget cuts, Los Angeles County considered selling or leasing parkland for development. The county did allow the construction of a hotel and restaurant at Bonelli Regional Park, though a larger development plan was abandoned in the face of a public outcry. See Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1989, ""Dead" Urban Parks Need Revitalization." Park gang statement from Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1984, "Parks That Pay Their Own Way." Survey is discussed in Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1987, "The Dead Parks: Insufficient Funding, Drugs and Violence Drive Many Away from City Recreation Areas." See also Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1989, "The Sad Decline and Fall of Urban Parks."

[17] "City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, 1980 Annual Report." Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks Archives. For the statistics on disparities in recreation, see Denise L. Lawrence, "The Recreation Gap: How Los Angeles City Recreation Areas in the Central Park Five Area and in Suburban Communities Have been Affected by Recent Budget Cuts." The Urban Project, University of Southern California, 1984.

[18] For information on urban parks and open space preservation in Los Angeles in recent decades, see Jennifer Wolch, John P. Wilson, and Jed Fehrenbach, "Parks and Park Funding in Los Angeles: An Equity Mapping Analysis." Sustainable Cities Program, University of Southern California, 2002, and "Cornfield of Dreams: A Resource Guide of Facts, Issues and Principles," Department of Urban Planning, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000, online at www.sppsr.ucla.edu/... See also Davis, Ecology of Fear, 77-91, and William Fulton, The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles (Point Arena, Calif.: Solano Press, 1997).

[19] These current issues have been reported extensively in the Los Angeles Times. See, for example, July 30, 2002, "State Buys Rail Land for Riverfront Park."

Lawrence Culver is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of History at UCLA, where he specializes in American cultural, environmental, and urban history, and the history of California and the American West. His essay is drawn from research for his dissertation, The Frontier of Leisure: Resorts, Recreation, and the Creation of Southern California. His research has been funded by fellowships from UCLA, the Institute for the Study of the American West at the Autry Museum, and the Historical Society of Southern California. [email: lculver@ucla.edu]

civic park proposals, downtown los angeles : project by ken ehrlich / lah*ub

Thomas Guide page 634 F-4

The Los Angeles H* Urban Bureau (LAH*UB), an L.A. based collaborative of artists and architects, actively experiments with modes of research in downtown Los Angeles. In the last year, we have focused almost all of our resources on the Civic Park Proposals project, which will culminate in an exhibition at Gallery 727 and ultimately a publication that investigates public space in downtown Los Angeles. Our broad research about urban space led us to the city's plan to create a Civic Park just south of City Hall. This park would be a part of the city's master plan to link all of the downtown civic buildings through the creation of green spaces - a plan dubbed the "ten minute diamond." This diamond would allow city employees and visitors to navigate between City Hall and the other city buildings in the area through a network of footpaths. Both the ten minute diamond and the park itself are in very preliminary stages of development. Yet these plans suggest a desire on the part of the city to generate pedestrian activity and to link the city's bureaucracy to the supposed revitalization of downtown. When LAHUB learned of this potential for the creation of a civic (public) space in the middle of downtown, it seemed the perfect opportunity to engage with the kind of narratives of conflict that we uncovered in our research. If a civic space were to be constructed as a park, how would this site be designed? How would diverse perspectives on the nature of public space play out in the process of this urban design scheme? And to what degree would the city make an effort to include 'the public' in thinking about the creation of a space that is, by definition, supposed to serve the needs of those who inhabit the city?

Downtown Los Angeles seems to be undergoing radical shifts, both visible and invisible. The blinding curves of the nearly complete Disney Hall seem like a vivid externalization of city's palpable, nearly pathetic desire to be considered once and for all a cultured metropolis. The recently completed Cathedral's grandeur reads, in part, like a shameful reminder of the endless, psychodrama that is the Catholic Church's ongoing sex scandals. Councilmember Jan Perry's moves to outlaw unpermitted meals for the homeless suggest a political and economic interest in paving the way for more upscale development. The heightened sense of security around City Hall resonates with the national trend towards an increased military presence in urban spaces. Construction is visible along Grand Avenue and at the site of the new Caltrans building between Spring and Main streets. But what is invisible in downtown? What exists in downtown that can't be easily registered as cause or effect? A proposed park offers the opportunity to consider what is not visible: The fantastic. The absurd. The implausible. The speculative. The imagined. The excessive.

There seems to be some link between the mythology of the contemplative space of an urban park and the utopian dream of a liberating imagination. As if no matter what one encounters in the city, a park might lift us from the drudgery of daily existence and propel us into the lofty space of dreams. And often the park is a restful, slowed down space; one that Angelinos can experience outside of the automobile. It's a kind of container for what does not fit into the parameters of home, work, or commute. But often the urban park becomes a container of excess of the unruly sort. Maybe it smells faintly like piss. Perhaps you're afraid for your safety rather than daydreaming contentedly. Often you're anxious rather than relaxed. Maybe the shade of green you hope to see looks more like a dull brown. A proposed park allows or perhaps encourages a re-investment in the utopian impulse behind the desire to create a park. LAHUB hopes to cultivate an investment in the potential for public space without losing the critical distance to see that a public site might easily become a dystopian reality rather than a utopian dream.

Without 'permission' from the city and with rather unstructured guidelines, LAHUB announced the Civic Park Competition in the fall of 2002. Participants were asked to create a 4 3/4" x 4 3/4" booklet of any length and a two-minute video in CD format. There was to be no winner and there were no prizes. All participants were offered was a chance to think critically or speculate playfully about the future of downtown by offering ideas for this site. We posted announcements on the web and spread the word among our peers, trying to generate as diverse a collection of proposals as possible. By January of 2003, we received almost fifty proposals from all over the world. In some ways, the proposals become a kind of index of contemporary artistic and architectural practice. Together the proposals form a disharmonious, almost unruly conversation about the future of downtown and public space in general. It is this very unstable collection of voices that we imagine in some imprecise way mirrors the dynamics of public space itself. (The very word 'public' is itself an unstable signifier, subject to contestation and multiple meanings.) Can we suggest then, that by offering a 'space' for individuals to consider this site and the potential for a Civic Park, we have created a kind of quasi-public space that wrestles somewhat uncomfortably with the dynamics of difference?

If there are any consistent themes among the proposals, however difficult to tease out, it seems that notions of difference, flexibility, and transformation surface and re-surface across many of the projects. Almost by default, many of the proposals function as critique. That is, in the proposals what doesn't work in the urban spaces of Los Angeles is made evident by the alternative strategies that are employed. Many of the proposals recognize that the park is a social space and aim to address questions of sociality in complex and abstract ways. If social space is the location where fantasies get acted out, then within Civic Park Proposals fantasy becomes a way to engage a potential social and political space. Some of the proposals encourage active interaction on the part of those who will use the park. Are participants wary of the master plan and perhaps looking for ways to allow the site to evolve after the park has been designed?

A sampling of Civic Park Proposals

Level Design submitted a proposal entitled Strategies for the Vacuum: re-examining the notion of civic space in los angeles. One of surprisingly few proposals from Los Angeles, Level Design begins with the assumption that "Bucolic parks that attempt to bring nature to the city are not of Los Angeles." And further that the "only civic space that is appropriate for Los Angeles is one of solid, not void." The solid is proposed as the topography for the Civic Park is a series of zones; each relating to a particular issue or material. These zones, although distinct, form an entity that in the words of Level Design is "intended to be read as a holistic event."

T. Robin Hennecke proposes Revolution. Structuring a proposal around the notions of adaptation and expenditure, Hennecke subverts common associations by literalizing the term revolution and proposes the Civic Park take the form of a cylinder that rotates one degree per day, thus completing a turn over the course of a calendar year. In a hand-drawn, elaborately constructed foldout book, Hennecke plays out a fanciful narrative that moves through technical considerations, philosophical musings, and cultural analysis.

Achim Wollscheid takes up the question of user interaction within the context of Civic Space in his proposal called Interface. Essentially a suspended grid of panels that responds to movement below, Interface is thus constantly constructing and reconstructing the park environment depending on its use. Responding to the formal plan of the city, Wollscheid creates a centerless grid that "might learn not only to accompany individual movements, but also create patterns or changes that react to 'duos,' 'trios' or groups, and include considerations about the relative stability of gatherings or movements."

The three proposals discussed here are not representative of the project as a whole nor are they indicative of specific agenda on the part of LAH*UB. Rather they form a small collection of diverse images and ideas within the much larger matrix of the project. Civic Park Proposals proposes a kind of reflection that acknowledges the permeability between the world "out there" and interior, imaginary ruminations. If for a moment we believe that the city is constructed through an accumulation of psychic projections and the residue of conflicting desires, the charged dynamic of the proposals confronts that (inevitably) partial fantasy that we might otherwise begin to cultivate as truth. Likewise, when we see the city as a material stage that precedes social dynamics, we are confronted by an onslaught of playful suggestions that jar our stale investments in static notions of public space. To investigate our own observations, idealizations, preconceptions, even our own utopian solutions for the city is meant to open up space for movement.

Ken Ehrlich is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. His installations have been featured at Side Street Projects, Beyond Baroque, and California Institute of Technology. He is the co-editor (with Brandon LaBelle) of Surface Tension: problematics of site (Errant Bodies Press, 2003). He received an MFA in Writing and Integrated Media from CalArts, where he co-founded and edited the journal Trepan. He teaches writing and art, most recently at U.C. Irvine.

LAH*UB [www.lahub.net] is Ken Ehrlich, Avi Laiser, and Liz Falletta.

exposition park, south los angeles, case study by alan loomis

Thomas Guide page 674 B-2

Los Angeles arguably has only two parks of the Beaux-Arts / Olmsted tradition - large, cultivated gardens in urban settings, home to iconic cultural institutions: Hancock Park and Exposition Park. However, both parks are significantly smaller than similar parks nationwide.

Furthermore, at 160 acres, Exposition Park constitutes half of the public park and recreation space within the 30 square miles of South Los Angeles surrounding the Park itself. The population of this area is over 400,000, at a density of 13,000 people per square mile, comparable to San Francisco. The resulting parkland ratio of 34 square feet per person is dramatically below both the Los Angeles and national averages. [1]

South Los Angeles	34 sq ft park / person, 13,000 people / sq mi
Los Angeles	130 sq ft park / person, 7770 people / sq mi
Chicago	115 sq ft park / person, 12,200 people / sq mi
Boston	166 sq ft park / person, 4130 people / sq mi
New York City	300 sq ft park / person, 24,330 people / sq mi
Minneapolis	756 sq ft park / person, 6350 people / sq mi

Yet this calculation assumes that all of Exposition Park is verdant green space, when in fact much of the park is dedicated to surface parking for 3800+ cars, various museums and sports facilities - including the under-utilized 101,000 seat LA Coliseum and the 22,400 seat LA Memorial Sports Area. Consequently, perhaps less than half of the park is available as publicly accessible outdoor recreation space. In so far as Exposition Park has been and continues to be encroached upon by development (and simultaneously subject to abandonment), it is an allegory for Los Angeles in general. Just as LA's natural and agricultural landscapes have been systematically developed without consistent open space protection, Exposition Park has been treated as vacant land waiting for buildings.

Exposition Park was established 1872 as privately owned showground equipped with stables, paddocks and a racetrack for agricultural and horticultural fairs, livestock and farm equipment shows, and horse races. In 1885 the park passed into public ownership, but through lack of funds and mismanagement it was nearly lost - stable public stewardship was not achieved until 1908, when an operating agreement between the state, county and city was reached. In 1913, on the same day Mulholland brought Owens Valley water to LA, Exposition Park was officially dedicated with the completion of the Beaux-Arts "City Beautiful" quad surrounding the famous Rose Garden - framed by USC on the north, the County Museum (now the east wing of the Natural History Museum), the Ahmanson State Exposition Building (now the north faÁade of the California ScienCenter), and the National Guard Armory. To date, the Rose Garden remains the most recognizable and heavily used green space in Exposition Park. But since 1913, the park has seen continued construction at the expense of its primary resource - open space.

1922 - the Exposition Clubhouse constructed.

1923 - architect John Parkinson opens the Memorial Coliseum.

1930s - the County Museum expands and shutters its eastern doors on the Rose Garden in favor of a new south entrance facing the Coliseum.

1932 - the Swimming Stadium is built and the Coliseum is enlarged for the Olympic Games.

1951 - the Ahmanson Building expands as the Museum of Science and Industry.

1959 - architect Welton Beckett opens the Memorial Sports Arena.

1970s - County Museum, now the Natural History Museum, expands again.

1983 - architect Frank Gehry opens the Aerospace Museum adjacent to the Armory.

1984 - the California African-American Museum opens.

1988 - Museum of Science and Industry announces it plans to demolish the Ahmanson building to construct a new facility.

1990 - the National Guard Armory is abandoned.

1991 - LA Unified School District announces plans to build a magnet science school designed by Morphosis on the site of the Armory; the project wins a 1993 Progressive Architecture Award, although it, with the proposed Science Museum, will severely diminish the historic character of the Rose Garden. Construction begins in 2001, but of a modified design that faces Exposition Boulevard and not the Rose Garden.

By the mid-90s, Exposition Park had been divided north-south between culture and sports, and any sense of cohesion had long been lost - the architecture and planning firm Zimmer Gunsal Frasca was commissioned in 1991 to develop a master plan to bring the disparate elements of the park into order. The firm was also hired in 1992 to design the new Museum of Science and Industry, and, at the insistence of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the design incorporates the north faÁade of the Ahmanson Building. The new museum, the California ScienCenter, opened in 1998, and created a public plaza around the ticketing windows and IMAX theater on the south side of the building facing the Coliseum, connected to the Rose Garden through an interior, but public atrium. The design is the first attempt of ZGF's master plan to unite Exposition Park into a singular entity. [2]

Yet this modest success is threatened by subsequent projects. In 1994, the Raiders football team leaves Los Angeles for Oakland, vacating the Coliseum - except for USC football games and occassional film shoots, it stands empty. The LA Clippers basketball team also leaves Exposition Park in 1998, abandoning the Sports Arena for the newly completed Staples Center. The following year, as part of a bid to bring an NFL football team to Los Angeles, a plan is announced to gut the Coliseum's interior to accommodate contemporary stadium standards. The proposal also imagines a large, multi-level parking garage constructed in the south portion of the park. Ultimately, LA loses its NFL bid to Houston, and the above-ground parking garage is not built. But with construction of the Morphosis-designed Science School nearly completed and the proposed expansion of the Natural History Museum by Steven Holl imminent, the erosion of Exposition Park's public open space continues.

Notes:

[1] This information was calculated in 1998, using the most current census and geographic data. The numbers do not reflect the results of the 2000 census - however, general population trends have been going up, whereas park creation has been static, so it is probable the parkland ratio has in fact dropped during the past four years.

[2] Details of the timeline are compiled from Nicolai Ouroussoff, "Alchemy in the Park" Los Angeles Times, Monday February 2, 1998; Karen D. Stein, "A major redevelopment of the formerly dilapidated California Science Center brings new energy to the institution and the 120-year-old Exposition Park" in Architectural Record, May 1998, pp177-187; and various USC websites, particularily www.usc.edu/dept/CCR/theme/expo.html.

using parks to make an urban metropolis : essay by stephanie pincetl

Los Angeles is well known as the nation's capital for air pollution, traffic congestion, and sprawl. It is perhaps less well known as the second densest city in the country, at over 8 persons an acre [1]. Additionally, its lack of parks compared to other large cities is legendary and historic [2]. Today this means that for entire neighborhoods, there are no accessible parks within walking distance. Further, poorer, denser neighborhoods where there are concentrations of people of color and immigrants, are at an even greater disadvantage than their whiter, more affluent counterparts. Out of 15 Council Districts, the 5 poorest have just 17 percent of the total neighborhood park space for an average of .455 acres of parks space per 1000 residents, less than a 1/4 of the City of Los Angeles' own standard. [3]. In this context, it is also important to recall that the results of surveys after the 1964 Watts Riots and the 1992 civil unrest showed that lack of parks was a concern that was even stronger than poor relations with the police. Yet, to build parks to satisfy acreage per capita goals that the City has set out for itself would require drastic condemnation and destruction of housing, clearly an unacceptable tradeoff. Thus, to create parks and open spaces to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged urban residents requires a different approach, one that approaches urban design from a new perspective: "open space is where it exists." In Los Angeles, despite its density, there is a remarkable amount of "open spaces:" vacant and abandoned parcels, hundreds of miles of alleyways, broad residential streets with wide planting strips, roof tops and underutilized parking lots, thousands of interstitial and left over spaces, and wasted lands.

Parks, open spaces and green spaces are essential contributors to quality of life, economic vitality, and human well-being in cities, as William Whyte and others have shown. Neighborhood-scale open spaces and community greening increase real estate value and assist revitalization efforts in depressed inner city residential real estate markets [4]. Additionally, new research has conclusively shown that property and violent crimes decrease with higher levels of greening [5].

When parks at any scale are provided in the city, they become woven into people's regular life-patterns, and provide beauty and relaxation, places and spaces of encounter and sociability. These are important contributors to the quality of life, even if the greened open space merely consists of being able to walk down a shady, tree-lined street [6]. English researchers in London noted the emotional importance of the blooming of even a single cherry tree in the daily life of residents.

Additionally, parks and open spaces can remedy some of the city's environmental problems: to mitigate stormwater runoff, absorb air pollution, reduce the urban heat island effect, and create urban habitat for regional fauna. The reinvigoration of natural ecosystems through an opportunistic use of "open spaces" can provide economic, environmental and social benefits to Los Angeles, fulfilling the balanced approach called for by sustainability.

Reintegrating nature's services in the densely developed parts of the city may seem like a daunting task, yet a closer look yields many opportunities: using the vacant and abandoned parcels, transforming the alleyways into linear parks that can also provide access for necessary vehicles, expanding sidewalk planting strips for more trees and benches, narrowing residential streets to make them more human scale rather than designed for speeding cars, transforming parking lots and mini-malls to become greened spaces in which cars are guests rather than sole users, introducing bioretention techniques (parking lot islands, planting strips or swales that collect and filter urban stormwater that includes grass and sand filters, loamy soils, mulch, shallow ponding and native trees and shrubs) and permeable surfaces, creating greened roundabouts to slow traffic and provide greater urban green areas - opportunities abound. This requires looking at the urban fabric through different eyes, seeing what are now hard open surfaces or empty spaces as potential spots for reestablishing flora and fauna. Such a shift in thinking is occurring gradually. Cities find that reintroducing nature's services can offer cost-effective improvements: trees contribute to cooling the urban heat island effect, help reduce urban runoff and absorb air pollution; well designed permeable surfaces can also mitigate stormwater and allow urban run-off to percolate back into the soil and replenish ground water resources; and what is more, these natural systems create more livable and healthier communities.

While many of these solutions may seem commonsensical, the major obstacles to their implementation reside in ossified city administrative structures and accounting methods. For example, trees offer many benefits across multiple agencies, such as South Coast Air Quality Management District, County Health Department, Department of Sanitation of Los Angeles, County Department of Watershed Management, and the US Bureau of Reclamation. But conventional accounting does not take into consideration the value of nature's services. Trees, though valued, are not monetarized for their considerable contributions to each of these agencies. In order to introduce and pay for a greened approach to the city, a new budgeting system needs to be developed and implemented. The region could then develop an urban forest agency, for example, into which all affected departments and bureaucracies might contribute.

Permeable surfaces would also contribute multiple benefits to agencies responsible for storm water and dry weather run-off, but currently no incentives exist to convert parking lots to permeable surfaces supplemented by bioretention techniques because of unrecouperable costs. There are hundreds of square miles of paved parking lots over which millions of gallons of water flow out to storm drains and into the ocean. There would be regional benefit to conversions: neighborhoods would be improved by being cooler, greener and more aesthetically pleasing due to more plantings.

Alternative municipal budgeting is the next frontier and will require rethinking how the city (and county) agencies are organized and how they perceive their mission. Taking the benefits of greening into account is part of a larger paradigm shift about costs and benefits being called "natural asset accounting," "genuine progress accounting," developing "indices of well-being." In this emerging system, for example, visits to the hospital, and pollution clean-up, are acknowledged as costs to society and well-being, not just additional dollars in the GNP. Thus planting and maintaining trees (for example) would not only be budgeted as a cost, but would also be entered in the asset column for their measurable benefits: reduced air pollution, stormwater retention, increased property values, and so forth. (There are now a growing number of GIS based programs that can provide the dollar figures for these savings, and avoided costs). Ultimately, to make Los Angeles more sustainable and livable, we will need to rethink what we consider as a cost, and how we account for benefits on a regional level.

The Los Angeles region is now a dense urban area, regreening and revegetating its abundant open and neglected spaces will make it a glorious urban metropolis, with human scale, walkable, vibrant neighborhoods.

Notes:

[1] Fulton, W., R. Pendall et al. 2001. Who Sprawls Most? How Growth Patterns Differ Across the U.S. The Brookings Institution: Washington D.C. Survey Series, July.

[2] Harnik, P. 2000. Inside City Parks. ULI - the Urban Land Institute in cooperation with the Trust for Public Land, Washington D.C.; and Hise, G. and W. Deverell. 2000. Eden by Design. The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[3] Verde Coalition, 2002. Testimony on the proposed urban land trust submitted by Misty
Stanford, hearing before the Los Angeles City Council Arts, Health and Humanities Committee, March 26.

[4] Conway, D. 2002. The effects of green space on housing prices. Marshall Magazine. Spring: 32-37.; and Garvin, A. and G. Berens. 1997. Urban Parks and Open Space. The Trust for Public Land Washington DC: 22.

[5] Kuo, F.E. and W.C. Sullivan. 2001. Environment and crime in the inner city: does vegetation reduce crime? Environment and Behavior, 33: 343-367.

[6] Burgess, J. et al. 1988. People, parks and the urban green: a study of popular meanings and values for open spaces in the city. Urban Studies 25: 455-473; and Williams, S. 1995. Outdoor Recreation and the Urban Environment. London: Routledge.

baldwin hills park, crenshaw : case study by therese kelly

Thomas Guide pages 672-673

One afternoon shortly after I first moved to Los Angeles, I took a new way home from LAX and found myself in a strangely surreal, yet somehow perfectly Angelean landscape. Two green hills rose up from either side of La Cienega Boulevard, both covered in wild grasses and bobbing oil derricks. These rust brown, arcane looking mechanisms, or similar devices, have been rhythmically extracting from the hills the rich remnants of prehistoric marine creatures ever since Standard Oil first discovered the oil traps in 1924. A brownfield site in the heart of the city, the Baldwin Hills paradoxically present a hopeful, imaginative opportunity for a twenty-first century park in L.A.

An aerial view of the Baldwin Hills reveals a massive scar of dirt roads gouged into the earth and over 400 active oil wells, now operated by Stocker Resources. Another 800 or so inactive or shut-in wells litter the landscape as testament to the 368 million barrels of oil and 269 billion cubic feet of natural gas this site has produced over the years. In a strange twist, the intense productivity of this industrial landscape has allowed for Los Angeles to grow up, fill in, and develop all around the hills, while the hills themselves have been to some extent left undeveloped. These degraded hills embody what some conservationists have called the Los Angeles version of "natural open space."

Surprisingly, there really is a great deal of nature to be found in these hills. A 2001 study by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County found the presence of the rare Gray Fox — the only canine that can climb trees — not to mention hundreds of birds and insects, and dozens of reptiles and other mammals native to the Los Angeles basin but seldom encountered anymore. Somehow, between the oil derricks, the busy traffic arteries, and an Edison power plant, the Baldwin Hills also manage to support the largest remaining expanse of coastal scrub in the Los Angeles basin.

It is on this extremely industrial, yet preciously fragile site that California State Parks is developing the largest urban park in state history. Rising 500 feet above the Los Angeles basin, the Baldwin Hills command impressive views to the Santa Monica Bay, the San Gabriel Mountains, the whole of developed Los Angeles, and even Point Dume. Piggy-backing off of the existing 319-acre Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, the proposed park will include the newly-acquired 68-acre Vista Pacifica Scenic Site rising above Jefferson Boulevard and Ballona Creek, and may eventually grow into a two-square-mile regional asset as public lands are added to the acreage and privately owned oil properties are leased or eventually purchased by the state's Baldwin Hills Conservancy agency.

Landscape architects Mia Lehrer + Associates of Los Angeles and Berkeley's Walter Hood envisioned the master plan for the park, but not without an extensive series of public workshops led by park advocacy group Community Conservancy International. Homeowners, soccer leagues, scout troops, senior citizen groups, church communities, and numerous other constituent groups actively collaborated in the design of the master plan. The result is a well-conceived design that is zealously supported by public groups, and deftly incorporates nearly every imaginable conception of "park."

The proposal has been touted by supporters as the Central Park that Los Angeles never had. Yet, this will be a park of a very different kind. The great urban parks of the nineteenth century exoticized nature, bringing the Adirondaks to New York City and American Bison to San Francisco. Central Park and Golden Gate Park provided (and still do provide) an antidote to the ills of city life, yes, but in a contrived, constructed manner that made nature picturesque and strollable. In contrast, a driving force behind the design of the Baldwin Hills Park is to preserve and leave undisturbed species and habitats native to the Baldwin Hills. The park will be not so much landscaped and designed as it will naturally evolve over time.

This emergent system depends on a series of linking mechanisms. "Habitat corridors" would provide a path for animals, birds and insects to roam, forage, and just plain live. Conceptually, a proposed half-mile-long "land bridge" would connect both people and animals from one side of La Cienega Boulevard to the other, thus uniting the site into "One Big Park," as the master plan is called. Bike paths would link the park to the Ballona Creek bike trails, enabling some visitors to enjoy the Baldwin Hills as part of a an even larger park system. The hope is that likewise animals might also find an enlarged habitat if the hills were better linked to the surrounding watershed.

A 2001 ecological assessment of the area's habitat conditions maps directly onto the proposed park plan diagram. Because the slope of the hills on the north, east and west is steep enough to discourage development, these areas have retained the most intact native habitat. In the plan, these areas would be accessed only via footpath, serving both as natural preserves as well as buffer zones from residential neighbors. The areas that are the most developed and graded happen to be in the central valley of the site. These would become the cultural and activity hubs for the park, with a playground, ballfields, community center, golf course, and amphitheater, among others.

This donut concept, with the most "natural" areas ringing the outside and the most "parklike" areas on the inside, leads to a sort of island effect for park visitors. Once inside the park, the cityscape is left behind, hidden beyond the steep ridges and concealed underneath the land bridge, while a series of public spaces unfold inside. The plan features all manner of park elements, from botanic and sculptural gardens, to camping and picnicking sites, fifteen miles of bike paths and foot trails, lakes, a climbing wall, soccer fields, viewing points, a restaurant with a scenic overlook, and even an "Oil History Site." Whatever you may think of when you think of park, this park's got it.

To enter this magical place, visitors will have to overcome a tangle of traffic arteries. The thoroughfares of Jefferson and La Cienega boulevards, La Brea and Slauson avenues that bound the park conduct volumes of fast moving traffic, lack sidewalks, and are difficult to cross as pedestrians. The proposed plan would provide pedestrian bridges across the Five Points intersection at the south entrance and Jefferson Boulevard at the north, "green" these boulevards with trees and other streetscaping features to announce the park entrances, and provide a shuttle with stops throughout the park so visitors can leave their cars at the city's doorstep.

While the park may buffer itself naturally from the rest of the city, its development and sustainability will depend on partnerships and links with the surrounding community. This park is conceived of not just as a place to get away from it all, but as a cultural and educational resource that is integral to the city. Interpretive nature trails, and educational and science facilities planned for the park will function as living laboratories with the support of regional institutions like the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Science Center. Local high schools and the adjacent West Los Angeles College (which will also provide weekend parking) can use the park as an urban learning resource. There is also the potential for job training and job creation in some of the visitor facilities.

Functioning then, as a regional resource, the Baldwin Hills are aptly located to appeal to a racially and economically diverse area of Los Angeles. Within a five-mile radius of the park, the population is a nearly equal mix of African American, Latino, and Caucasian; annual household income levels within this planning area range from $13,000 to over $100,000. The cohesion of this widely varied demographic makes the huge swells of public support for the park even more impressive, and underscores the colorblind desire of many Angelenos to have a park. The sense of public ownership of this place — that until now has existed only on paper — stems directly from the intense public involvement and collaboration on its design. Public input continues to be sought through outreach and at meetings organized by the Baldwin Hills Conservancy.

While the proposed "One Big Park" of 1600 acres and enormous land bridge will take decades to complete, some parts of the park plan are already underway. The Vista Pacifica Scenic Site, acquired in December 2000, by now has a dedicated staff of State Park Rangers working to reestablish habitat and trails. (It is not yet open to the public, however.) The San Diego architects Safdie Rabines and landscape architect Pamela Burton of Los Angeles are developing the specific plan for this site, with a classy restaurant, viewing pavilion, interpretive science center, and nature trails. In many ways Vista Pacifica — the so called "jewel" of the Baldwin Hills because of its impressive views and potential for habitat restoration — will become the demonstration project that shows just how possible it is for Los Angeles to demand and create a park that is as equally rich, diverse, and inspiring as the population it serves. These hills have already survived eleventh-hour threats of bulldozers grading for an upscale housing development in late 2000 as well as a proposed emergency power plant in the energy crisis of 2001. This park has gusto behind it, and whatever form it eventually takes, this will be a park L.A. can be proud to call its own.

"it's not as complicated as people think" : essay and case studies terence young

Many of the residents of America's older central cities want more Greenspace in their own and their families' lives. They crave the cooling, stress-relieving beauty of street trees, the relaxation and recreation offered by neighborhood parks, and the chance to grow their own food and socialize with their neighbors in community gardens. This desire to improve the social, economic, and even the ecologic condition of neighborhoods is unsurprising. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, and New York are woefully short on public Greenspace. Even seemingly well supplied cities turn out to be deficient at the scale of the neighborhood because a large portion of their greenspace is concentrated into one or a handful of large parks, which most residents find difficult to access. Although these larger greenspaces are valuable and deserve continuing support, they cannot substitute for smaller features within easy walking distance of every resident. People need to be able to experience parks, street trees, and other green settings at a temporally and spatially comfortable scale - the everyday and in their neighborhoods - not just occasionally and after a trip across town.

The following case-studies are aimed at the resident wondering if his or her community could have more greenspace, the advocate who may be seeking more street trees or a community garden, and the professional planning the urban landscape. The emphasis is on practicality, and on small spaces, since it is these that are most likely available for greening in central cities. As the studies demonstrate, easily accessed greenspace is not an unattainable, utopian dream. New parks, community gardens, and other neighborhood greenery appear regularly in a wide variety of urban settings. Nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Americans invested heavily in large and small parks, parkways, street trees, and greenbelts because they understood the myriad social and economic benefits generated by urban nature. It is time to once again press the agenda of park makers and advocates like Frederick Law Olmsted so that every city dweller can live within walking distance of a park.

The cases developed below follow three basic design, funding, construction, and management models: largely public; a relatively balanced blend of public and private; or, largely private, but they are presented in two broad categories: conventional; and, novel types of places. Nevertheless, each is a success story, the tale of a central city community that augmented its greenery. Every study is necessarily brief and cannot explore all the questions, struggles, despair, and triumph in each case, only a handful of highlights. The studies demonstrate that creating parks and similar features is possible, but often takes much time and effort; communities must be patient and persistent in the pursuit of greenspace.

Conventional Greenspaces

Grand Hope Park - Los Angeles

Grand Hope Park is located in a redeveloped block in the downtown area known as South Park. Owned by the city's Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), the 2.5 acre park shares its site with the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising plus the Renaissance Tower apartments. The school and residential building, along with other nearby apartment and office buildings, form Grand Hope Park, Inc. This Business Improvement District (BID) is a non-profit organization that finances and runs the park under a 50-year leasing agreement with the CRA. The city hopes the park will spur further redevelopment in the district and act as a model for the private management of public facilities.

The site was set aside for a park in the 1970s but little was done until the late 1980s when landscape architect Lawrence Halprin was engaged to design the grounds. Construction began during 1989 as the CRA provided $3 million from funds paid by nearby project developers for transferable development rights assigned away from the park and three building sites. Delayed by the bankruptcy of the park's builder in 1992, financial problems at the Renaissance Tower, and a controversy over a fence surrounding the site, the park quietly opened in 1994. Today, office workers and residents from nearby buildings enjoy the park every day of the week.

Besides Halprin, the park's design was influenced by three visual artists, four composers, and two poets. The 53-foot clock tower and series of cascading fountains create a harmonious blending of artificial and natural sounds that ring throughout the site. Bronze statues in the shapes of coyotes, a hawk, and a snake grace the park's grassy knolls. And, a colorful playground provides recreational opportunities for the children from nearby residences while an amphitheater furnishes a setting for numerous entertainments.

Warrington Community Garden - Philadelphia

Like many cities with older neighborhoods, Philadelphia has unmaintained vacant land where buildings once stood. Disinvestment, growing unemployment, disinterest, and changing demographics have buffeted these areas, leaving unplanned and unbudgeted vacant land. However, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has toiled to help green these empty spaces through one of the most ambitious community gardening programs in the U.S. The society is best known for its horticultural publications, public education programs, and especially its Philadelphia Flower Show, but it also runs Philadelphia Green, the nation's largest private beautification effort. With a staff of 45 and an annual budget of $3 million, some of its programs are aimed at traditional parkway and park greenspaces, but the majority focus on communities desperate for greening plus jobs, retail outlets, housing, medical facilities, and schooling. Philadelphia Green provides technical assistance and some materials to help residents implement community gardens, street tree plantings and other sorts of neighborhood greening projects. West Philadelphia's Warrington Community Garden, in a struggling, working-class neighborhood pock marked by vacant lots, is an example of their assistance.

During the 1970s, residents of the neighborhood began tending small gardens on a one-acre, privately owned parcel. The owner was amenable, even encouraging, and ultimately offered to give the land to the gardeners in the mid-1980s. Unfortunately they had no legal vehicle to accept the donation. In 1986, Philadelphia Green helped Warrington and other local gardens create the Neighborhood Gardens Association (NGA), a land trust, to ensure that community gardens received long-term protection. To date, NGA has purchased 21 gardens. Nevertheless, the NGA appeared too late for the Warrington garden because the property was sold and then sold again to a developer who requested permits for new townhouses on the property. The local residents fought the development asking why their garden had to be destroyed when there were many untended, trash-filled vacant lots nearby. They were successful in this struggle but recognized that a similar situation could arise again shortly if they did not acquire title to the land. Fortunately, NGA began negotiating with the owner and raised $20,000 from foundations while the gardeners themselves raised $15,000. With these funds, NGA was able to purchase the land and is now holding it in perpetuity for the gardeners. They cannot be thrown out of their garden now. With this solid foundation, the Warrington gardeners have since gone on to expand the garden and create a revenue-generating tree nursery which brings money into the neighborhood and provides an opportunity for young people to learn valuable skills for productive lives.

forum issue 5 : parks

edited by alan a loomis and lize mogel

from paradise to parking lot by lawrence culver

civic park proposals, downtown los angeles : project by ken ehrlich / lah*ub

exposition park, south los angeles, case study by alan loomis

virginia avenue park, santa monica : case study by michael pinto

using parks to make an urban metropolis : essay by stephanie pincetl

public green by lize mogel

baldwin hills park, crenshaw : case study by therese kelly

augustus hawkins park, south los angeles : case study by lize mogel

les parcs & los parques : new parks & new natures by chris kahle

confluence park, los angeles : case study by jennifer price

3 acres on the lake : dusable park, chicago by laurie palmer

"it's not as complicated as people think" : essay and case studies terence young

about the contributors