Harbor Park Management Plan

City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation

Over the years, both cities and the concept of parks have evolved. Cities have grown out, grown higher, and grown denser. The idea of parks has changed from being only green pleasure grounds to include playgrounds and recreational facilities. Now, these traditional forms of parks are hard pressed to provide recreational activities for the burgeoning urban population. New York can no longer create large tracts of new parkland, not in its core nor even at its borders. But the demand exists for more places and ways to take recreation. The richness of cities themselves offers a solution to the problem of finding new recreational resources, new in kind as well as new in location. Urban Cultural Parks create new recreational experiences by using underused cultural resources that already exist in the fabric of the city. These co-exist with other urban functions -- commerce, finance, government, arts and letters, transportation, neighborhoods, manufacturing, communications, education, tourism. By expanding the role and geographic dimensions of the traditional park, the new concept regards the entire city as a park. Streets, existing parks, public places and architecture are given new life as resources of an urban cultural park. This pragmatic approach to recreation has the power to coalesce the citizens of a city to revitalize neighborhoods, business districts and waterfronts. Not the least of the benefits of Urban Cultural Parks is that the unique character and heritage of each community is highlighted, making each neighborhood special, renewing a sense of civic pride, and developing close to home a respect for cultural and natural values.