Are you asking whether city parks produce more economic benefit than their cost? If so, then I think the answer is probably yes, but I’m not sure how to prove it.
Good lord in heaven, it’s Poe’s law in action! You really associate something that cities have been building and running for a few centuries now with hyper-liberal “activist” government?! 
:rolleyes:
Chicago in the mid-19th Century was about as laissez-faire as you can get, and the factory owners and business barons pretty much got what they wanted. The meager welfare or assistance available at the time was based almost exclusively on voluntarily charity rather than government. Nobody was busing in high-schoolers to rectify past injustices because that’s when the now-past injustices were happening and they were in part the people doing them. :smack: Those influential businessmen had absolutely no problem unleashing the state militia on strikers, for instance.
But those very hard-headed businessmen pushed hard for a system of large parks to be built at the expense of local property tax-payers because, in part, they believed it would increase the value of the land around the parks that they owned and wanted to develop into residential communities. And it worked, and the developers were successful as a result. And people bought into those communities knowing that their property taxes would be higher to pay for those parks, because they didn’t have such an oversized horror of taxes as universally negative and realized that, gasp, the benefits from the taxes outweighed the cost of the taxes. Yep, sounds like a socialist plot to me. :rolleyes:
John Bredin, I am a practical sort of guy. I don’t live in cities as they were a century ago. I live in a city as it is now. And now the civic activism is a sure sign of that very hyper-liberal “activist” government you speak of.
I am fully aware of the fact that things worked/work differently in San Francisco of 1910 or in Tokyo of 2010. And on Mars parks might be particularly profitable and beneficial, for all I know. Nevertheless, my comment should be taken to apply to the American here-and-now.
So you’d rather live in a city without parks?
Ha! HA, I say!
Where I am, building dog parks are viewed as a plot by white conservatives to rob social programs of needed funding. Building parks here is the OPPOSITE of activist government, it’s viewed more like corporate welfare: a government giveaway to those who don’t really need it.
No,no. I think he just wants to live in a city where no new parks have been built since 1960. You know, when those dirty hippies ruined a millenia old tradition of creating parks by, um, creating more parks.
I live in a city with some freaking amazing parks. They are part of the reason I love living here. They are part of the reason we get so many tourists. They are part of the reason why taxes are higher here than other places, I’m sure, but there is nothing more amazing than taking 6 miles of dilapidated elevated railroad tracks and turning them into a fabulous park and garden to serve your community. Having a place where members of your community can go and commune with nature, play with their children, walk their dogs, and generally step away from the concrete and steel for an hour or so is so much more valuable than money and does a lot more good for a community than another strip mall could ever do.
well, duh! The modern liberal movement is, among other things, a gigantic government giveaway to those private businesses that play ball. Does Obamacare ring a bell?
That does not negate all the other things that they do (bus children, fight obesity, hold pride parades, protect human rights of Afghan females, pay government officials big salaries etc). But then the world is not “black and white”, as some people keep saying. I say it’s more of the color of human excrement nowadays 
hmm, Ravenman, sounds like I got carried away, sorry. It is indeed the case that regardless of the Liberal affinity for “civic activism” projects and associated pork spending and government power expansion, plenty of “Conservative” NRA-card-carrying type of businessmen and their pocket politicos can also be implicated in the same scam while being less gungho on the less personally financially advantageous liberal measures.
I’ve worked in park planning and management in years past, and in no case has it been the consequence of “hyper-liberal activist government”…whatever that means. Moreover, your market-driven meme that “unless it turns a direct monitary profit it is valueless” is simply ridiculous. Parks are rightfully considered a necessary part of infrastructure developement, just as roadways are. Or water and sewer systems. Or sidewalks.
In the utopian rural-agrarian world of the libertarian true believer, where each and every yoeman has his 5 acres of land, I’ll grant you a park system might be an expensive extravagance, although even then some sort of commons would be desirable. But, as you’ve pointed out we live in the American here-and-now… a crowded urban high-rise world. Charles Eliot, the pioneering landscape architect made an excellent case for park systems as a necessary component of the well-being of a laboring urban populace:
In that case why are they called resources? Shouldn’t it just be called a “public cost”. Or public asset.
And if they have value (somehow), sell them.
Wouldn’t it be brilliant to just sell everything the Government owns that has value but generates a cost? You’re getting money and cutting your costs at the same time. Then the government could use all that money and lower taxes. We lose ownership of the whatever-it-is that costs money but has value, but what good is an asset that only costs money for you, but somehow is valuable to others. Seems like those “others” that think it has value would be much better owners, something that is valuable shouldn’t have to be a cost, it should be profitable.
…“the others” would not buy the public park to use as a park because they wouldn’t make any money off it.
If “the others” did buy the public park it would be to make money off it: so they would change it so the public couldn’t get access to it without paying, or turn it into apartment blocks. It would no longer be a public park.
The “city” owns the parks to ensure that they remain a public park.
I’m not entirely sure if this is a joke thread, or you are trying to make a point that is just going over everyone’s heads.
Why do you want to live in a city with no public parks?
Read up on “existence value”. A good economist to start with for this subject is Atif Kubursi.
Actually, it sounds like anything you disagree with is just labelled “liberal.” Or maybe “lib’rul” is the right spelling.
No, that would be the opposite of brilliant. It would be jaw-achingly stupid.
If you privatize public parks then the new owners will have find some way to charge people to use the facility. Of course, it’s unlikely that a simple park in an urban could generate enough revenue to justify keeping as open green space. The new owners could probably make more money by turning it into an amusement park or a shopping mall. And being good capitalists, they’d be foolish not to. So in the long run if you privatize all the parks, they will go away and be replaced by buildings or other recreational facilities that turn a higher profit. No more walks in the park or picnics on the grass for anyone in the city, rich or poor. They can all go sit in the food court at the mall.
But whatever replaces the previous park generates money, so obviously it has value. So it is profitable for the government to sell and profitable for the buyer to buy. The only argument against it is that it would damage the value for the people living next to the park. So if park value to others < X, where X is what ever is built, then everyone wins. Only if park profit value to others as a park > X does anyone lose money. And to avoid that you could have an open auction, where everyone also has to state what to do with the property then everyone is protected from losing value as long as one party does not alone have more funds than the other are willing to pool.
…and of course, as you seem to have forgotten, the people who currently use the public park will loose access when the park moves into private ownership.
Why do you want to live in a city with no public parks?
if you wanted to show off the profound moral and intellectual superiority of liberals over Conservatives, you have not succeeded doing so with this post. “Dispassionate and intellectual” is a better persona in online discussion than “prone to making unfounded personal assumptions and generally jerkish”.
I think the answer is yes too, and I think it’s been proven. The health benefits alone probably make most parks ‘profitable’ for society, add ennviromental bonuses, increased property values etc and it becomes very hard to argue against it.
I haven’t forgotten that. The point is that the economic system puts zero value on several things that are beneficial to people. Even though a park pays for itself (ie: the values it produces are bigger than the cost) it is still enterd into the financial books as only a cost.
I was trying to make a point about economy, but I also wanted to learn from the debate. And I don’t want to live in a city with no public parks, I want to live in a city with an optimal amount of optimally kept parks. And although I am not sure how much would be optimal, I’m sure it is more than most cities have now.
It makes sense to me to assume there is a diminishing return on the benefit of parks. Obviously 100% park is too much and 0% park is too little. It also has a diminishing return with distance. Living next to or within walking distance of a park will generate more benefits than living further away. Finding the sweet spot from a socio-economic viewpoint would be a good start and very helpful from a city planning perspective. Finding a political consensus on the benefits would be a good start for reaching the sweet spot.