The Future of NYC – Parks
Group Members – Aisha Ali, Mehreen Ahmed, Rawan Shafi, Vishal Vig, & Jodi Wong
Outline:
General Overview of Parks
1) How do parks contribute to the community?
2) Why should we invest in parks?
3) A mini-history of the parks and their development in NYC
NYC Parks – Present
1) Budgets and fundings for parks in Queens
2) Maintenance of parks (staffing and programs)
3) Before and after Hurricane Sandy (how parks prepared for the storm and how they plan on tackling future climatic catastrophes)
4) Information on each individual park
a) Cunningham Park
b) Alley Pond Park
c) Flushing Meadows-Corona Park
i.mini-history of each park
ii. facilities available
iii. individual funding (if applicable)
NYC Parks – Future
1) Current problems with parks and possible future changes
2) Maps of Queens borough, highlighting areas that lack parks nearby
A) Why aren’t there parks in these “areas?”
B) Why can’t we make more parks with the funding money instead of redeveloping or adding newer facilities
to older parks?
C) Has PLANYC helped on a broader sense to actually make newer parks? Has it been conforming to the
standards written down in the book itself to improve the future of NYC parks?
D) What are the barriers to creating new parks?
E) How will these future parks be funded? (differently or similarly to previous parks)
Breakup of Tasks:
Rawan Shafi – Interview with Mr. Garafola (Deputy Commissioner of Parks) & asked questions; took pictures of and interviewed some people at Flushing Meadows Park; contacted Ms. Rodriguez and scheduled the interview with her; working collaboratively on the Future of NYC Parks with the group; Focus on Flushing Meadow Park (history, funding, facilities)
Jodi Wong – Performed research on Alley Pond park; worked with Rawan on Flushing Meadows Park, as well; participated in the interview with Ms. Rodriguez and typed up the information while she was speaking; also working collaboratively on the Future of NYC Parks – both background (descriptive) and analytical focus of these parks
Aisha Ali -Participated in the interview with Ms. Rodriguez and typed up the important information during the interview; researched the history and development of the parks in NYC; focused on the mini history, facilities, and funding of Cunningham park; visited Cunningham Park to gather pictures and interview people; created the questions for the interviewers; collaboratively researched PLANYC and its ideas towards creating new parks in NYC; provided the general outline for the project as a whole.
Mehreen Ahmed – emphasized on Cunningham Park and worked with Aisha to research the park and visit it and took pictures for visual data; helped with the outline makeup, too and contributed to give good ideas for questions to be asked during the interviews; conducted research on funding, particular facilities offered by Cunningham Park; researched scholarly articles on history of parks as well as the broader goal of plaNYC, how its helped develop new parks, future initiatives and brownfields
Vishal Vig – Updated the Google Docs page; participated in the interview with Ms. Rodriguez; working together with the group on the Future of NYC Parks and PLANYC guidelines; focused research and visit for Alley Pond Park; took pictures and visited the Environmental Center; mini history of the park itself and funding aspects
A few things. First, I think you should follow up with the woman you interviewed to ask her some of the questions you pose about the future of the parks, PlaNYC, and park expansion to other areas in Queens with less access. Who will be doing that?
Second, I think you should find or make a map of all the parks in Queens, differentiating between areas that have adequate park space and those that don’t. This could be done in Google maps pretty easily by shading the two areas with different colors. I can help you with that if you want. See if you can get an idea of how many parks would need to be build to meet the PlaNYC goal. (Is this already in PlaNYC? Are maps like this in there already?) If you can estimate this, then you can estimate cost based on what you already learned about park funding. Once you have these numbers, you’ll be in a better position to estimate how feasible PlaNYC really is.
Hi Ms. Dickinson,
I have already emailed Ms. Iris-Rodriguez about the future questions for parks and am currently waiting for her to reply back. I also think using the map to highlight regions that have and don’t have parks in the Queens region is a great idea. I appreciate the help, thanks! If we have any questions regarding the map, we’ll let you know.
As I wrote in a separate email to the entire class, you appear to have collected a great deal of interesting information, much more than can be included in your 10-minute presentation. So I suggest that you write it all up by early next week and then extract from it the “meat” that can go into your presentation.
You seem to have a three-part presentation: (1) Why are parks important? (2) What is the current state of the parks, with three examples in Queens. (3) What are the future prospects for the existing parks and for possible future additional parks, as suggested in PlaNYC. Your presentation should give the highlights on these three questions, with the backup material providing the details. You still need to find out, from Ms. Rodriguez-Rosa if possible, what they are doing to implement the PlaNYC recommendations. Aside from that, it seems as if you have plenty of material for your presentation.