Useless green space

;-)

Often a % green or "natural" (the favorite around here) of open space serves nothing more than to add to sprawl. Here a 25% natural area is generally required for site plans. So you see long 2-ft wide strips of underbrush next to the street. It's "natural" don't you know? It was growing here when we built on the vacant lot, so it's got to be natural. Actually it's what was left over when the area was logged a decade or so ago. This is a city. I think it should look like one. Street trees would be far better.

Sometimes the importance of space should not be measured by the number of users.

I think the Onion staff has been reading Buffalo Rising lately.

When I saw that article, it reminded me of the hype that seems to go into the most minor of projects in Buffalo; practically everything is touted as being the salvation of a neighborhood or a city. It's not just BR, but everywhere.

One comment from an article celebrating the opening of a donut shop[:

Dunkin Donuts: the savior of retail in downtown Buffalo. :r

But of how much use is a house sized "green space". Lets see:

Yard for dog poop
Gathering place for teenagers nobody likes
small waste disposal area because nobody in the neighborhood owns it

I am guessing there is a minimum size "green space" that is possible for effective use. Green space linking one development to another via trails not along streets seems to work ok, and adds to recreational value of a development. Many other ways to work it also but it should be useful in design.

Hey, I was one of the teenagers that no one liked:) Of course, I just stayed in my room and wrote poems about boys I would never talk to.

Useless green space? Useless? Shoot, I know just what I'd do if I lived in a place where there was a scrap of 'useless' green space out my front door.:-D
http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32670

There is a huge series of articles going on right now in the Rocky Mountain News regarding Colorado's conservation easement abuse by developers. Seems they dedicate this open space for massive tax credits, but rarely is it open for public benefit.

-Sorry to partially hijack a humorous thread,

signed,

Buzz Killington.

My reply was written when this thread was in the FAC, or I would not have said it. The other thought that occurred to me was that I recall reading somewhere (and I want to say it was something Jane Jacobs said, but I can't be sure) about a public housing project where the officials involved in building it and running it were oh-so-proud of the lawn and green space around it while the residents completely loathed it. The officials felt that the lawn basically raised the projects up to a similar status as a suburban single family home while the residents experienced it as useless, wasted space where crimes happened. I also remember a passage about 3 christmas trees going up in a housing project. The two in "private" (hardly trafficked) open spaces were quickly vandalized. The one in the central, most heavily trafficked open space was not.

Jane Jacobs had some good things to say about parks being either an asset to an area or a problem based in large part on how useful and heavily trafficked they were.

Just noticed this thread. This is the neighborhood where I live. One of the largest City Parks in the country is located in Warrendale. We hall have small yards and there are no bums sleeping on the sidewalk (they sleep in the alleys).

I was immediately e-mail bombarded with this article when it came out.

I am OK with "useless" open space. Areas that can be left in a undisturbed state that will not get screwed up by human overuse is OK with me. Isn't this why there is a difference between parks and open space?

Thank you Richi and Michele Zone! A percentage-based set-aside requirement, all by itself, can be creatively obeyed without actually creating any public space or preserving any healthy habitat (a la Richi's brush strips.) And even when a solid chunk of park or open space really is set aside, its design, placement, and pedestrian traffic make or break it more than what percentage of the development it takes up. (See MZ's post, and yes, you remember right, it was Jane Jacob's Death and Life...) I think that new developments, and even better new or revised zoning designations, should still include minimum percentages of parkland or open space. But, those percentages should come with requirements in design and placement to ensure that the parks/spaces work. I can't really come up with any detailed requirements here, because every place has different needs/goals (recreation, habitat preservation) and different contexts (inner urban, outer urban, suburban, small town.) But maybe all of this is something to keep in mind?

We have a 35% greenspace requirement (that can be reduced through incentive zoning provisions down to 15%). We also have a requirement that 5% of the interior space of parkign lots must be landscaped. No - nobody is going to sit under a tree in the Walgreen's parking lot, but it does break up the view of the asphalt.

I agree - if its not viable public space, or wetlands, or used for stormwater management (a huge issue in NYS right now), or to screen parking/dumpsters/HVAC units - it isn't critical to have it.

This reminds me of some apartment/condomini(m)um rules sheets that I have seen, where they are so strict about not being able to enjoy the green space (other than to look at it) that you wonder if you can even WALK on the lawn without getting evicted.

Mike