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Gotham Gazette: Good Parks Are Good for the EconomyPage 1of 3 Gotham Gazette - http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/parks/20090624/14/2949 Good Parks Are Good for the Economy by Anne Schwartz 24 Jun 2009 Photo (c) re:kuwait By the time the first section of the High Line opened in June to wide acclaim, dozens of new buildings had already sprouted up around it, including a glass-curtained hotel that floats above the park and a series of residential towers designed by world-renowned architects. City officials have predicted that development sparked by reinventing the abandoned elevated rail line as a park will bring $4 billion in private investment and $900 million in revenues to the city over the next 30 years, the Times reported. The surge in development spurred by the High Line is the latest exhibit in the growing stack of evidence that having beautiful, well-maintained parks is much more than a nice amenity cities can ignore when times are hard. Creating and maintaining parks stimulates the economy and also provides quantifiable recreational and environmental benefits along with other services and savings to taxpayers. In the most recent analyses of the economic benefits of parks, a study found that Central Park contributed $1 billion to the city's economy in 2007. A broader assessment by the Center for City Park Excellence of The Trust for Public Land quantified the real economic benefits that parks provide, using examples from cities around the country. In supporting the seemingly quixotic vision of West Side residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond, founders of Friends of the High Line, to save the old railway and make it a linear park -- and in incorporating it into the city's planning process for the far West Side -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg indicated he understood the impact public space can have on a city's economic growth. The mayor further recognized the link between parks and prosperity in his sustainability plan, PlaNYC 2030, which aims (though, since the recession, at a slower pace) to create new parks and plazas citywide. Until the fiscal problems hit last year, the Bloomberg administration had modestly boosted the budget for operating and maintaining the parks department, to about $270 million a year. But next year's budget cuts about $13 million from parks maintenance, eliminating 250 summer workers as well as $3 million for tree pruning. This follows the previous year's reductions, for a total cut of $24 million since 2007. The parks budget has not had consecutive cuts of this magnitude in more than 15 years. Advocates worry that the reductions could start the city back on the path to the dismal conditions of the 1970s and '80s, reversing a parks revival that contributed to the city's economic resurgence. "I think we're going to see the consequences through the park system," said Christian DiPalermo, executive http://www.gothamgazette.com/print/29497/31/2009