by Magda Ibrahim
Horticulture Week
20 February 2009

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A row that erupted in the US last week over banning the provision of funding for parks has raised fears of similar proposals in the UK.

The $787bn (£552bn) US government economic stimulus package caused a rift after Republican senators successfully introduced an amendment that would have banned any of the cash from being spent on parks.

Senator Tom Coburn’s anti-parks amendment stated that it would prohibit funding going to gambling establishments, community parks, museums and theatres, among others.

But the final version agreed by the US Congress – made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate – has thrown out the controversial clause.

Los Angeles-based civil rights lawyer and director of parks lobby organisation the City Project Robert Garcia warned that despite the agreement green spaces were not necessarily safe.

“The final package adopted in conference by both the House of Representatives and the Senate does not contain the prohibition of funds for parks,” he explained.”This does not mean funds will actually be invested in parks – only that there is no prohibition against it.”

UK parks consultant Alan Barber said politicians here needed to be made aware of the case for parks, and the economic benefits they could provide.

“Unfortunately, we have politicians just as (out of tune with this issue) as those President Obama is fighting in the Senate,” said Barber. “They are fixated on a model of economic growth that cannot be sustained if we are to thrive within a finite environmental envelope.

“Parks are a win-win because they can attract businesses and they also bring the kind of social benefits which economic growth is supposed to promote.

“The problem today is that economic growth is pursued wholly in monetary terms, not in terms of improving the quality of life.”

Barber added that in previous economic downturns, there had been investment in park building, such as Oldham’s Alexandra Park, using workers laid off in the Lancashire Cotton Famine of the 1860s, and Bristol’s Eastville Park, built in the slump in the 1920s.

Likewise, in the US, President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s included 8,000 parks-building projects to help the economy recover after the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

“This time, we don’t seem to be hearing anything about park building, yet there is so much we can do,” said Barber.

Outside central government in the US, budget cuts are already taking place, but campaigners in the green-space stronghold of Philadelphia are vowing to continue to fight for their parks.

After decades of underfunding, Philadelphia’s mayor approved a $2.5m (£1.8m) increase for one of its local parks last spring, only to cut budgets by $3.1m (£2.2m) in the autumn.

The Philadelphia Parks Alliance, which last year published a report on the economic value of its parks (HW,7 August 2008), is now lobbying for more investment at a series of meetings this week.

Read the rest of this story in the British journal Horticulture Week . . .