The housing market is tanking, but one kind of real estate is gaining value in major U.S. cities: parkland. After years of infighting over what to do with the few remaining areas of open space in metropolitan areas, several communities are creating huge urban parks — several times the size of New York's 843-acre Central Park. "We grew so rapidly in the '80s and '90s in the rate we were consuming land, people did become alarmed," says David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a national coalition promoting green space. "This desire for parkland and capitalizing on natural assets is really taking hold."

It is spurred by several factors, including mounting environmental concerns, improved property values for park-side real estate, increased demand for green space from health-conscious people moving back to cities and a greater availability of vacant industrial land.  The parks development comes despite troubled public finances in many metro areas because of the housing and credit crunch.

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Several ambitious urban park projects that are underway:

•In Orange County, Calif., a 1,347-acre park is being developed on the site of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The federal government is retaining another 1,000 acres for a wildlife and wilderness area. Residential, commercial and industrial projects will go up on another 2,400 acres.

"For so long, we've neglected the public realm," says Larry Agran, an Irvine City Council member and former mayor who chairs the Orange County Great Park Corp. "The park is everyone's backyard, and it enhances property values."

•In Memphis, a final plan will be selected soon for the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms — formerly a prison farm that was turned over to a group that will develop the park.

"Our work is really focused on the public realm," says Alexander Garvin, a Yale University professor and park planner who is advising the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. "How do you use public property to shape quality of life in the city?"

Most of the great urban parks were created in the 19th or early 20th century. Garvin, who managed the Lower Manhattan design selection for the World Trade Center site, says Shelby Farms will represent what parks will look like in the 21st century.

•In Atlanta, "The BeltLine" will connect almost every city neighborhood to walking trails, trolleys and parkland. It will add 1,400 acres of parks on 13 sites along transit lines.

•On New York's Staten Island, the 2,200-acre Fresh Kills Landfill, which became the storage place for the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11, is set to become the largest park built in the city in more than a century. The dumpsite is getting biking trails, boating and fishing spots, waterfront restaurants and art.

•In Alabama, U.S. Steel sold a 1,100-acre tract atop Red Mountain in Birmingham to a land trust at a deep discount: $7 million for land valued at more than $16 million. Red Mountain Park will have 18 miles of trails, fishing ponds.

Not an easy sell
For 35 years, prisoners were brought to Shelby Farms in Memphis to till fields and pick crops. They produced food for inmates and sold the rest for the state. It was acclaimed as an innovative way to rehabilitate prisoners. It hasn't been a penal farm for more than four decades, but a rehabilitation of a different sort is underway. After a protracted tug of war over whether the county should turn the land over to commercial and residential developers, Shelby Farms is finally on the verge of being redesigned as an ecological showcase. The county approved a conservation easement that allows park use but heavily restricts commercial development.

"It was a very courageous decision," says Laura Adams, interim director of development of the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy. "The county could've made a different decision — to sell off 1,000 acres and develop a Wal-Mart. … We would've had office buildings, residential, commercial." Over the years, there were attempts to build shopping centers, golf courses and conference centers. In the 1980s, a few bison were brought in to create a wildlife preserve. The preserve didn't quite happen, but the buffaloes stayed. There are 30 now.

The final plan for the park, which was unveiled last week, may incorporate aspects of several proposals, including trails that will connect across the city and county all the way to the Memphis Riverfront, a network of amenities showcasing the Mississippi River. "It's a real 21st-century park," Adams says. "It's ecologically sound, environmentally sound and it possibly would generate its own energy."

In Southern California, it took almost a decade and four ballot initiatives to finally get Orange County residents to agree to turn a former military base into the Great Park. One of the early proposals: to build an international airport. "A tremendous battle," Agran says. "But as the population grows, as land values increase, older urban areas and metropolitan areas are good candidates for better land use." About half of the 4,700 acres will be developed. There will be three residential areas, one in a transit district around a train station.

"There's a growing awareness of the importance of providing green space to cities around the country," says Catherine Nagel, executive director of the City Parks Alliance and the National Association for Olmsted Parks (named after landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, one of Central Park's designers). "We're seeing a renaissance of parks supporters." For the first time, her organizations have invited speakers from other countries to their urban parks conference this fall in Pittsburgh.

Growing green space
"The environmental movement is looking to use as much of the landscape as possible to clean the air, provide natural drainage and do the kind of nature-friendly work that parks do," says Garvin, who also works on the Atlanta BeltLine. Concern over public health is another great motivator for cities to create parks and encourage outdoor activity, he says. Since the 1970s, the U.S. obesity rate has doubled. Diabetes eats up one of every $5 Americans spend on health care. The more pragmatic incentive: Parks generate real estate development on their edges, Garvin says. "If you look at Central Park, you can see what I'm talking about."

(Usa Today, 17/04/2008)