Hello and thank you for reading my blog. The purpose of these short summaries is to provide a knowledge bridge between urban park practice for politicians, engineers, urban planners, community developers, social scientists, and park users. This is a short summary of the blog and what you will see in upcoming posts.
“Parks Are Like Icebergs” is a reflection of my 30+ years of urban planning practice and 10+ years of undergraduate and graduate studies in urban planning and parks; the latter using institutional theory as a lens to describe my experiences. arks do not magically appear in an urban landscape. The location, size, configuration and programming (i.e., activities) of a park in a geographic area is the culmination of multiple decades of polices, plans, construction and agreements between users, government entities, developers and community non-governmental organizations. Understanding the past in the present allows a greater understanding of how to best plan for the future considering the multiple actors and positive outcomes of parks in urban areas.
Topic areas will include but not be limited to: why parks; how much is enough; site and system configuration - parks as systems and as systems of program systems; planning legislation; park development roles and responsibilities; the social, ecological, recreational and economic benefits of parks; park space and place; land ownership; and documents as institutional knowledge. Additional topics will be added over time. It is also possible for blog readers to recommend future blog topics.
Finally I encourage you to follow the blog, and share it with your friends. I would appreciate feedback - the good and the bad and the ugly.
Greetings, Dr. Priebe. I just subscribed and will be taking a closer look to your Substack "Parks ..." writers portal. I'll be looking at your posts thru the lens of an environmental economist concerned - in a warming world faced with increased climatic stress - about the physical and financial resilience and sustainability of parks (and protected) areas as critical reservoirs of biological diversity while serving their concurrent essential roles as recreational venues, the earth's lungs - when a tree standing is worth more than a tree cut - and watersheds, except for marine parks of course.
I hope we can communicate further on the topic. In the meantime take a look at some short personal essays of mine - "Pricing the Priceless," and "Save our Salamanders," and "Reverence for Life" posted on my Substack writers portal "AFTERTHOUGHTS" at philchurch.substack.com. Parks are implicit if not explicit concerns in each of these essays.