The Community's Role in Sustaining Urban Parks	.
Valerie Burns	Author Info

Abstract

Introduction

Like many older Northeast neighborhoods, East Boston has a legacy of abandoned industrial lands; mainly a commercial port and a railroad that serviced it. The area no longer provides the jobs for the neighborhood as it once did, and the waterfront piers and railroad lines have been quiet for more than a generation. These industrial lands have been the subject of numerous redevelopment proposals, and each time, with the residents split or opposing them, these plans would fail. The reasons: lack of money, political will or community support -- usually a combination of all three. And the longer these abandoned industrial lands stayed empty and unused, the more of a problem they became for the neighborhood. At the same time, a common vision for this land was emerging from the community: a system of parks along a greenway, carved out of an unused rail corridor.

One thing I've learned in working with the residents of East Boston is that a community armed with a common vision is a very powerful force. Of course, a common vision is not always easy for a community to articulate, but it's not as elusive as you might think. The greenway idea that has captivated East Boston is not the one that the redevelopment authority or the transportation agency was interested in, but it is a vision that the residents are willing to start working for, and so far they have been very successful. Now vision without resources, frankly, is nothing but a dream. In East Boston the resources were provided to the community by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, a foundation which gave funding to a nonprofit organization, Boston Natural Areas Fund, to staff a community organizing project to move the vision of the East Boston Greenway forward. The first step we took was perhaps non-traditional. We invited everyone in East Boston that wanted to work on the greenway to be part of a coordinating council. With no more formal invitation than that, people volunteered, and interestingly enough, when residents came to the meetings, they often found themselves sitting next to people they had opposed on other redevelopment proposals. The pursuit of new parks allied neighbors in new ways.

The council began to meet, and still meets regularly, and the community council evolved into an important catalyst for leveraging resources and convening partners, going even beyond the capability of any single public agency. Armed with a common vision and a coordinated voice, the greenway council has been able to get political support at various levels, most importantly the support of the mayor. With his endorsement, the greenway council pursued the key landowner, Conrail, who owned one and a half miles of rail line that we were hoping would be the spine of the greenway. Working with the Trust for Public Land, Conrail met with the council several times, became convinced that both the community and the mayor supported this idea with no undercurrent of controversy, and offered to donate the rail corridor to the project.

Once the greenway council focused on the goal of building a greenway, they were able to take advantage of opportunities for community mitigation from airport and highway expansion to leverage additional land and resources for other parts of the greenway. The port authority and the highway department have cooperated with the residents in focusing their mitigation packages to greenway creation because they know it also contributes to a larger context.

Not just about recreation

Neighbors talking to neighbors

I have also learned that creating and sustaining parks is no longer the simple arithmetic of land plus money equals park. Today, creating parks is geometry with multiple factors and dimensions. New land for parks, when available, is usually contaminated, requiring expensive remediation. Local public funds are rarely sufficient. They usually need to be matched with state and federal funds. And in many cases, public money isn't enough, and you need private money and charitable money. For the East Boston Greenway, all these elements are in play. And we have only begun. With no one agency solely responsible, the community has been and will continue to be the common denominator. This is a very unusual way of developing a park, and it's one that really takes a lot of faith. And I give a lot of credit to a number of public agencies for believing that this might work.

The community has been the common denominator: envisioning the greenway, gathering and increasing support, and being a catalyst for collaboration, as well as an active and contributing partner with the city administration and other public agencies. Most importantly, the community sees itself not as a temporary partner, but as a permanent partner. It is critical that the public agencies also recognize the community as permanent partners. We know the community is going to survive administrations and funding cycles, so they are a critical factor for the sustainability of the park.

Although they have become very savvy about things like costs of maintenance and programming, the council is now struggling to develop a management program for the greenway, before the first construction contract is underway. Although the outcome of this is not yet known, these agencies with which we are negotiating have never before felt the benefit of community support, so we know that whatever we come up with will be something that hasn't existed before.

I believe that the idea of partnering with a community to create a sustainable park isn't a trend. It is a fiscal, political and social reality. We're not going back to the way we used to build parks. In the future, we are going to build parks differently, with lots of partners. And I believe that as a part of that process, the community must be recognized, not as someone who complains and takes but doesn't give, but as a substantial partner who brings real assets that can deliver a permanent return.