Would You Pay To Park?

Does every city neighborhood need to have green space? Most urban planners and design experts seem to think so. But when neighborhoods are close together and a city has an abundance of parks, it is always necessary?

I found myself pondering this recently when I saw a poster protesting the lack of green space in one Northwest neighborhood. It was true -- that neighborhood did not have many parks. But I knew of several parks within walking distance -- D.C., after all, has 127 named neighborhoods within its 61.4 square miles of land. They were not in that “neighborhood,” but they were certainly close by.

The issue came to mind again when I came across a Washington Business Journal piece on the transformation of the NoMA (north of Massachusetts Avenue) neighborhood. Michael Neibauer writes that NoMA “went from industrial no man’s land to burgeoning neighborhood in less than a decade, but District planners and developers omitted a critical piece of any mixed-use neighborhood: parks. There’s not a single one” amid all the new retail, business, and residential space.

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