Natural Gateways
On the horizon for city life: Easy access to a national park
By Joseph D’Agnese, Parks Magazine
A growing urban population means tighter workspace and living quarters for millions of Americans. Time spent squeezed into apartments, office cubicles and commuter transport may foster careers and grease the wheels of industry, but it also creates pressures that need venting away from the maddening crowd—not so far away, though, as Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. Because city dwellers need rest and inspiration every day, national parks are coming closer to home.
Just a short trip by subway from Rockefeller Center, for example, New York’s Gateway National Recreation Area offers a retreat from the noise and pedestrian traffic in midtown Manhattan. Even the most demanding naturalists will find satisfaction in 40 square miles of national park, beaches, marshlands and an almost untouched barrier island that ring the city’s harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island to the coast of New Jersey.
Here you can bird-watch at dawn, on a beach where there is no noise but the breaking of surf. At midnight you can watch stars because you are far enough from the lights of the city to see them. There are many traditional wilderness park activities: hiking, canoeing, kayaking, swimming, and fishing, but that is only part of Gateway’s story—
You can also ride a motorcycle on the tarmac at an abandoned airfield. You can explore the nation’s oldest operating lighthouse or visit a fort built to protect the harbor during the Revolutionary War. You can sign up for one of more than 500 plots at the community garden in Brooklyn. American flags dot this riot of fruits, flowers and vegetables, and plot-holders celebrate every July at an annual picnic. If none of these activities suits, you can play golf, ride a horse, shoot an arrow, windsurf, kite-board or listen to a concert as you sit on the grass.
A Park for Every City
New Yorkers are lucky to have such a treasure. There are others just as extraordinary: Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, San Francisco’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. But not all cities have this kind of refuge. Experts who think about parks say that more are needed. Eighty percent of Americans already live in metropolitan areas; that percentage will only climb in decades ahead.
“Parks act as pressure valves to lower stress,” says John Crompton, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Texas A&M University. He believes new parks should be no more than an hour’s drive outside the city. “Times have changed,” Crompton observes. “Parents don’t bundle up kids, put them in the car, and tour the parks for three weeks in the summer.” Families need places to enjoy an afternoon’s vacation.
Those afternoons will become more precious as tensions increase. Lloyd Bowers, a psychotherapist who works with the employee assistance program at J.P. Morgan Chase, says: “Parks are the perfect stress management resource, a place we can connect with something bigger than ourselves, helping to put our lives in perspective. Parks give us the opportunity to quiet our minds, freeing us from internal chatter. They nourish us not only physically but spiritually.”
“People all over need parks to find solace and to find community,” says Betsy Shure Gross, who serves as the chair for the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. A short ferry ride from downtown Boston, the 34 islands that make up the Boston Harbor Islands National Park are a model for an urban escape. Some of the islands draw urban refugees in search of an unspoiled retreat; others provide beaches and visitor’s centers.
Spectacle Island is a surprising example of how cities can help shape the parks that they need.It was built up over the last 10 years by over 3 million cubic yards of earth and debris from a highway project, and the island has grown to over 100 acres. It has also become one of the jewels of the harbor, a peaceful center for recreation with miles of walking trails, and a host to educational and outreach programs that teach kids about conservation.
We can bring parks even closer to home, says Gillian Bowser, a wildlife biologist and an adjunct professor at Texas A&M who acts as the National Park Service liaison to the Gulf Coast Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit. Put parks right in the middle of the cities where we live. Many such parks already exist. Applying a long tradition of partnership with the private sector, the NPS can enlist municipal governments, Bowser suggests. Such three-way cooperation brings funding and expertise to help foster more parks where everyone can breathe again.
A Place to Learn
But it’s not enough to just build parks. Bowser says, “We need to make sure people use them.” Increasingly, the park system has to compete with video games and television. One effective way, she finds, is a hands-on invitation to help in the remarkable science being done in the parks. Seventy-two national parks are conducting or planning inventories of every species of plant, insect and animal in order to study biodiversity within the park. “Biologists have catalogued more than 5,000 species at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 500 of which had never been described before,” Bowser says. These inventories are made up of many smaller community-based surveys. Anyone can volunteer.
“You give someone a butterfly net,” she says, “and it’s exciting to see the sense of discovery. When volunteers examine a plant or animal that is unknown and describe it in detail, they feel like they know something worth knowing, that they are on a frontier where they are needed.” That level of close involvement with the park’s future can build a lifelong bond.
Enticing visitors from behind their computers and gaming consoles means thinking creatively. Ulrike Gretzel, an assistant professor of tourism at Texas A&M, has thought about ways to use new technologies like virtual tours and podcasts.Gretzel wants viewers of a park Website to experience a visit without leaving their computers. In addition, Podcasts could immerse listeners in a rich audio environment—the sound of birds, the whir of cyclists, paddles dipping into a lake or stream—and also provide engaging on-site tours and interpretations.
Financing the Dream
Shaping the future of parks calls for vision. It also calls for the funds to make dreams a reality.Amy Meyer devoted more than 35 years to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). In her opinion, the key lies with public-private partnerships that create and care for parks. Good relationships between government and public advocates for parks are vital.
One of the ways private groups can help is by acquiring parkland and holding onto it until the federal government has funds to take it over. Once land is acquired, local supporters may also step in to provide amenities which will, in turn, attract more park enthusiasts. This kind of ongoing support will ensure a robust future for national parks. “It takes people caring, and it takes government caring,” Meyer says.
In coming years, as our cities get more crowded, our citizens will need more Gateways and Golden Gates. To achieve this goal, every city will need a John Crompton and a Gillian Bowser as well as an Amy Meyer: individuals in the public and the private sphere who possess the imagination and determination to help us rediscover and invigorate a glorious legacy.
This article appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Parks Magazine.
