I have to say, with all my heart, how dangerous I feel that the tapping of real estate to fund NYC’s parks is. The Center for an Urban Future forum (held at the end of March) for example, was presented as a “public good” conversation. It is not. It is a Trojan horse—an astroturfed effort to normalize the further privatization of New York City’s public realm under the guise of fiscal necessity.

The premise itself is flawed: that parks must increasingly rely on real estate extraction, private philanthropy, and quasi-private governance structures to survive. In reality, this model has already been tested—and it has failed communities, distorted public priorities, and undermined the very concept of public space.

Let’s be clear about what is being proposed: density bonuses, value capture schemes, special assessment districts, and “parks improvement districts” aren’t neutral tools. They are mechanisms to convert public land and public trust into private leverage for development.

And the organizations convening this discussion are not disinterested. The Center for an Urban Future (CUF) itself is backed by a network that includes major real estate interests aligned with Real Estate Board of New York. It ain’t a coincidence—it is alignment. https://nycfuture.org/about

Academicians and legal mavens’ analyses are unequivocal. For example, a foundational finding by Margaret Walls indicated that heavy reliance on private funding leads to systemic inequities, instability, and distorted priorities: Wealthier parks attract disproportionate funding while others are left behind, and donor-driven priorities override public need. Ergo, funding becomes unpredictable and unsustainable and then public investment is “crowded out” by private giving

In other words, privatization doesn’t solve under-funding—it entrenches it. Similarly, the CUNY Law Review’s These Parks Are Our Parks documents how privatization in New York has already restricted public access, commercialized parkland, excluded surrounding communities and eroded accountability to the public trust.

The so-called “innovations” being discussed at that forum were simply the next iteration of these same failed models.

We don’t have to look too far to see when ‘Public/Private” means public loss! We have already seen what happens when parks are turned into revenue engines. In Prospect Park, the privately driven GoogaMooga festival: fenced off public parkland, high entry fees, excluded the surrounding community, damaged the landscape and generated negligible public benefit,

This is not an anomaly—it is a blueprint.

Likewise, decades of reliance on conservancies and private funding have produced a two-tier park system, where flagship parks flourish while neighborhood parks—especially in Black and low-income communities—are neglected.

In my own backyard, Fort Greene Park, this template is just a local version of a citywide inequitable ‘taking’ under the deceptive banner of ‘public good’. Former NYC Parks Commissioner Silver concocted an initiative like “Parks Without Borders” which exemplifies the problem. He, as an Urban Planner (not an environmental scientist or any green space professional) sold a vision of accessibility, improvement, and ‘equitable open spaces’ while in practice proposals included the removal of mature tree canopy, the elimination of natural landscapes and a plan for them to be replaced by hardscape plazas! And we’re still fighting it to this day!

In Fort Greene Park, the proposed removal of dozens of mature trees in favor of paved space was framed as progress. In reality, it would (and still might, if left to proceed) reduce carbon sequestration, reduce heat island mitigation, reduce ecological resilience and reduce community well-being! You might well ask…where exactly is that that…? Right across from the large Ingersoll-Whitman NYCHA project buildings…natch. Developers seeping in from the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership BIDs inching ever more closely into historic Fort Greene with their skyscraper adjacency! Shadows and displacement! Perfect example of Introductory ‘Class 101’ social engineering…the latest iteration of Urban Renewal!

This is what happens when parks are treated as design projects and real estate assets—not living environmental infrastructure. Bottom line is this -parks are not under-performing assets. They are public trust resources and the shift being advanced here reframes parks as revenue generators, development catalysts and financial instruments tied to land value.

The public trust doctrine requires that parks be preserved for public use, protected from alienation and governed in the public interest.

I see this forum presenting a false binary: either accept privatization or allow parks to deteriorate.

Dedicated public funding—especially broad-based taxation—provides the most stable, equitable, and accountable foundation for park systems .

If the City can create tax expenditures, subsidies, and incentives for luxury development, dammit, it can fund its parks.

We don’t need to “tap real estate” to save our parks. We need to stop real estate from capturing them.