Push for urban parkland takes root

The housing market is tanking, but one kind of real estate is gaining value in major U.S. cities: parkland.

After years of infighting over what to do with the few remaining areas of open space in metropolitan areas, several communities are creating huge urban parks — several times the size of New York's 843-acre Central Park.

"We grew so rapidly in the '80s and '90s in the rate we were consuming land, people did become alarmed," says David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a national coalition promoting green space. "This desire for parkland and capitalizing on natural assets is really taking hold."

It is spurred by several factors, including mounting environmental concerns, improved property values for park-side real estate, increased demand for green space from health-conscious people moving back to cities and a greater availability of vacant industrial land.

The parks development comes despite troubled public finances in many metro areas because of the housing and credit crunch.

Several ambitious urban park projects that are underway:

•In Orange County, Calif., a 1,347-acre park is being developed on the site of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The federal government is retaining another 1,000 acres for a wildlife and wilderness area. Residential, commercial and industrial projects will go up on another 2,400 acres.

"For so long, we've neglected the public realm," says Larry Agran, an Irvine City Council member and former mayor who chairs the Orange County Great Park Corp. "The park is everyone's backyard, and it enhances property values."

•In Memphis, a final plan will be selected soon for the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms — formerly a prison farm that was turned over to a group that will develop the park.

"Our work is really focused on the public realm," says Alexander Garvin, a Yale University professor and park planner who is advising the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. "How do you use public property to shape quality of life in the city?"

Most of the great urban parks were created in the 19th or early 20th century. Garvin, who managed the Lower Manhattan design selection for the World Trade Center site, says Shelby Farms will represent what parks will look like in the 21st century.

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