Protecting Our Open Space Investments

Most urban dwellers can recite an array of benefits that attractive, well-cared-for open spaces provide. Green spaces in the city are especially prized, offering respite from traffic and noise, opportunities for exercise and recreation, and pleasing vistas for the walk or ride home. In cases where residents provide hands-on care, they help create a sense of community pride. On a broader scale, green spaces and trees filter the air and water, absorb storm runoff, provide shade, moderate temperatures, and can even reduce violence.

Yet with many municipal budgets stretched thin, there are new pressures to justify the cost of setting aside and maintaining open space, especially when compared to the revenue generated by new commercial or residential development. Fortunately, there is a growing body of hard evidence that urban greening offers considerable economic benefits, in addition to the quality-of-life enhancements already mentioned.

John L. Crompton's report, The Impact of Parks and Open Space on Property Values and the Property Tax Base, lays out the argument: "The real estate market consistently demonstrates that many people are willing to pay a larger amount for a property located close to parks and open space areas than for a home that does not offer this amenity." ¹ Crompton, a professor of recreation, park and tourism sciences at Texas A&M University, points out that higher property values mean higher property-tax income for the city.

Other documented economic benefits include increased tourism, more profitable shopping districts, and enhanced investment activity in and around green areas. And Crompton adds: "A review of over 60 fiscal impact studies clearly indicated that preserving open space is likely to be a less expensive alternative for communities than residential development [which requires costly infrastructure and city services]." ² Naturally, a city cannot thrive on open space alone, yet its importance in the overall framework of revitalization cannot be overstated.

If open space is a wise investment for all of these reasons, it follows that its benefits would be short-lived without an effective maintenance plan. That's why urban land management is a critical component of the Green City Strategy, developed by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) and adopted by the City of Philadelphia as part of its anti-blight campaign, the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative. Based on the 30 years of experience of PHS's Philadelphia Green program, the Strategy calls for investing in Philadelphia's entire green infrastructure, from empty lots to small neighborhood gardens and parks to highly landscaped public spaces and gateways.

Once these landscapes are restored or enhanced, caring for them involves a range of partners, budgets, and operational models. Here is a look at the impact of maintenance on Philadelphia's open spaces.

Public & Private Partnerships for Civic Spaces

In the case of the highly cultivated grounds of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the adjacent Azalea Garden, PHS partners with the city's Fairmount Park Commission (which owns the land), manages landscape contractors, and organizes volunteers. At both places, PHS led full-scale, multi-phased renovations to bring these formerly neglected city landmarks back to peak condition, then raised funds for maintenance endowments. The transformation has been dramatic. Today, visitors to the city's world-class cultural institution are welcomed by landscapes that rise to the grandeur of the building.

PHS also works as a "fee for service" contractor with several organizations. For the Penn's Landing Corporation, it manages the landscapes at Penn's Landing, a public plaza along the Delaware River waterfront, and 17 blocks of medians along nearby Columbus Boulevard. In a similar role, it oversees the lands abutting and covering I-95 as it passes through Center City. This land is owned by the federal government and the state and managed by the Interstate Land Management Corporation, which raises funds for maintenance through parking fees. PHS also provides management services for the Center City District, a business improvement district, with a contract that includes the care of more than 800 street trees and 87 sidewalk planters. The health of these landscapes reflects the health and vitality of Center City.

Other projects include important city gateways—the "first impressions" of Philadelphia for tourists and commuters alike—such as 26 th Street, leading from the airport to the downtown area, and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, which leads to the city's Amtrak train station. All of these examples involve a mix of public and private partnerships.

Leveraging Resources for Community Parks

A well-kept park reflects a community with a healthy quality of life, while a neglected, trashed space reveals the despair of a struggling neighborhood. Many cities across the country are faced with decreasing budgets, and this often trickles down to adversely affect their parks and public spaces. It raises a tough question: With limited resources, how do we best care for our neighborhood parks, whose condition in many ways mirrors and even influences that of their larger communities?

By the early 1990s in Philadelphia, parks showed the effects of decades of neglect and dwindling municipal funds, often becoming abandoned eyesores and magnets for crime. To change that, PHS created the Parks Revitalization Project, a three-way partnership with the city and neighborhood groups to restore these parks and maintain them for neighborhood enjoyment.

Initially, PHS worked with the community "friends" groups, helping them build their organizations so that they could in turn organize regular workdays, plan improvement projects, recruit additional volunteers, and hold special events. Philadelphia Green also serves as a liaison between the city and the volunteers and provides project support, training, and advice. On average, volunteers annually donate 1,700 hours of labor to each park (about 40 are currently involved).

Responding to a groundswell of support from the communities, the city began to commit additional resources. Its Department of Recreation now provides regular mowing services, tree care, and trash collection and repairs buildings and other infrastructure. It also employs seasonal maintenance attendants, who handle day-to-day maintenance and report hazardous conditions or other problems.

"The key is that the city recognized the good work being done by the community," notes associate director Joan Reilly. "It realized that its renewed investment in these parks not only tangibly contributes to quality of life but makes sound fiscal sense." Moreover, this additional support from the city has been essential to the efforts—and momentum—of the friends groups.

City Support for Community-Driven Land Management

If you're traveling through many neighborhoods outside of Center City Philadelphia, you're bound to come across vacant lots—pieces of land where housing or industrial structures once stood. Until recently, most of this abandoned land was choked with tall weeds and filled with debris that ranged from beer cans and broken glass to rusted refrigerators and burned-out automobiles.

In 2001, as part of the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative (NTI), the city embarked on an ambitious cleanup of over 31,000 vacant parcels (a parcel is a single street address). Yet five or six months after the initial cleaning, the lots began to fester once more with rubbish. To address the problem, the city approached PHS to come up with a pilot initiative for the ongoing care of recently cleaned lots, with an emphasis on low-cost maintenance that would invest the communities in the process.

Unlike other PHS-led efforts, which involve cleaning as well as enhancement of vacant land with grass, trees, and wood fencing, this tactic is more elemental. "The sizeable investment of time and resources in the initial clearing phase would have little long-term effect without ongoing management to prevent the lots from deteriorating again," explains Mike Groman, director of Philadelphia Green. With a solid maintenance program in place, these lots could eventually be landscaped—in some cases permanently preserved as open space—or attract new development.

PHS selected eight organizations in four sections of the city and awarded them contracts for tasks such as trash pickup and mowing, to be performed on a regular basis between June 2003 and June 2004. (This pilot program is a part of the PHS's one-year, $4 million contract from the city's NTI.) The program is addressing over 1,900 parcels, or more than two million square feet.

In choosing the organizations, PHS looked for groups that had already demonstrated an interest in keeping their neighborhoods clean, then held training sessions in landscaping, the use of equipment, and organization.

"The maintenance program has raised great hope and wiped out years of apathy and hopelessness," says Wayne Rahman of Universal Companies and chair of the South Philadelphia Block Association, one of the selected groups. "It's like a quiet renaissance. We've cleaned up hundreds of lots and improved the quality of neighborhoods and blocks devastated by drugs and prostitution."

Despite some initial challenges, including continued dumping on some sites, all the groups were performing well within three months of the project's outset. "The idea is to increase the capacity of groups like these so that they can take on the care of more and more land," says PHS project manager Bob Grossmann. "This could create an inviting climate for potential investment projects, while giving these communities a stake in determining what happens in their neighborhoods."

Maintenance Pays

Maintenance is hardly the most exciting of terms, but its importance cannot be dismissed. Indeed, a lack of the most basic ongoing care can lead to intractable problems. People simply stay away from trashed, neglected places and will go out of their way to avoid uninviting, potentially dangerous blocks. Businesses don't want to stay or invest in a downtown riddled with junk-filled plazas and crumbling buildings. Tourists certainly don't want to visit and spend their vacation dollars in blighted cities.

Attractive, well-kept open spaces enhance the urban environment, but their long-term value relies on the quality of care they receive. "Well-maintained areas are gathering places for people of all ages and walks of life...places that contribute to the vitality of adjacent properties and businesses," says Paul Levy, executive director of Philadelphia's Center City District. "Neglected spaces are mostly empty and detract from the value of anything nearby."

As these examples demonstrate, no one constituency can be entirely responsible for maintaining public open space; partnerships are the key to any successful management strategy. Maintenance needs to be considered at the outset of any endeavor, be it a city project or a multi-organizational effort. And its costs must be built into the planning process as a way to protect the initial investment.

1. Crompton, John L., The Impact of Parks and Open Space on Property Values and the Property Tax Base, National Recreation and Park Association, 2000, page 1.

2. Ibid., page 3.