This article provides a brief introduction to New York City’s new Department of Parks and Recreation commissioner, Mitchell J. Silver. Nothing about the article is explicitly economic, but Silver’s description of how he is approaching his new position raises some interesting questions about matters of cost and benefit in urban planning. Mitchell, whose background is as a city planner, makes it clear that he as a holistic view of the issue, “Parks are a system within a city. They are connected to culture. They are connected to traditions and memories, the economy, the natural systems. As a planner, I take a very different view of parks, as not just a green space but a public space.”

The economic view holds that parks, like any parcel of land, are goods. Goods that can be bought, sold, “consumed” (enjoyed may be a better verb in this case), and even developed. Importantly, and as Silver makes clear, they are “public” goods. As such they are closed off from the possibilities  entailed by a free market and private ownership. New York City parks, given their location, are very valuable plots of land, and the government could probably profit tremendously from developing the land for commercial and residential purposes. By keeping the parks green and accessible to everyone, some economists would say that the NYC government is failing to realize the full economic potential of the park land. However, others, including Silver, would likely argue that the parks provide their greatest benefit as they are. Their logic being that as parks, this land provides a huge, albeit difficult to measure, amount of benefit to the many people who come to the park. Parks have also have economic value in that they can revitalize urban areas by attracting more people and therefore more commerce to the area. By the same token, parks often raise the real estate value of the surrounding neighborhoods. While it is difficult to determine which use of the land would generate the most profit, given the fact that the NYC government has a certain commitment to, as Silver puts it, “equity and fairness,” it seems unlikely that NYC’s parks will be developed any time soon.