Bryant Park: A Design for the Crowd - Research Paper Example

? Bryant Park Corporation A Design for the Crowd Bryant Park is a 9.603 acre privately managed Public Park. The park is located in the New York City municipality of Manhattan. It is located between fifth and the sixth avenues of Midtown of the same city. The New York main public library is located in the park making it the sixth way of the park’s main entrance. It is a scenic landmark in the city. This non-for-profit cooperation park is managed privately and is cited as a model of success for the private-public partnership. Today it is one of the largest occupied urban parks in the world. The development of Bryant Park is traced back from 1970s. In the early 70s, the park had turned out to be a haven for drug dealers who transacted their business confidently. The prostitutes, idlers and the homeless also had taken their share in the park. The park was by then considered a ‘no-go zone area’ by normal citizens. Sparked iron fence surrounded the park while the dense shrubbery blocked the view from outside, making the inside hazardous. Whyte suggested some ideas that have led to the development of the park to make it friendlier. The fence was demolished and the shrubbery cleared. This was then followed by the establishment of impressive and welcoming entrances. The insides of the park underwent some serious renovation that saw numerous sitting places, tables and cafes installed (Halle, 2003). This was done by the parks support group called the Parks council. The council brought new life to the park, and their effort continued in the succeeding years. Groups like the Bryant parks restoration Council came in to help improve on the condition of the park. The Bryant ark restoration council later opened up the park to the street and encouraged different activities to take part in the park Landscape architectural advisor Laurie Olin also played a major role in helping rehabilitate the park. This person brought in the idea of adding more seats in the park, increasing the access points, lawns and flower beds, expanding the library`s central book stack underneath the Great awn and more so - the restoration of the Bryant statue and the fountains. Wrangles arose amongst the people about the ownership of the park and if Bryant Park could accommodate all the activities and in addition serve as a place of leisure. The park design was maintained, but the park underwent some petitioning that suited it as a whole. Different activities were located at different places (Carr, 1993). The renovation of the park made it enjoy bumper harvest in terms of economic success. Bryant Park today is one of the signature places in New York City. With limited cases of crime, the park is for the workers on sunny weekdays, visitors overflow during the weekend and revel also come to spend their time in the park during the holidays. The park records a large number of people that spend their time in the park daily. The social amenities found in the park have become popular to people thus promoting the businesses that are carried on in the park. District co-operates help run the park, and this means that it has become attractive to white collar job oriented people. The park has launched a free wireless network, and this has made it one of the best parks in the world at the moment. The lawn in the park provides excellent scenery to people enjoying themselves there. The lawn offers tall grass in the Manhattan south of the central park. It serves as launch room for midtown office staffs, as a resting place for the tired pedestrians, and as sitting place for some of the parks events like film festivals and fashion shows. This helps generate a lot of funds that help in the daily running of the park. Various events are carried out on the Great Lawn found in this park. There are many film festivals that are shown on different occasions like in the Monday evenings. Various artists conduct their performances with the aim of generating funds for the park. This has indeed become one of the best sources of revenue in the past few years for the park. Ponds have been established in the park alongside holiday shops. The ponds provide sites for skating rink that has instantaneously become a fixture in the Manhattan holiday place. The pond is a compliment to the holiday shops that have gained fame all over Europe. In addition to this, this park also has a chess concession that offers chess facilities and lessons. There are free classes for tai-chi, juggling, yoga, knitting and a court for practitioners. This has made the park one of the main places to go and enjoy both indoor and the outdoor games (Main, 2010) The Bryant Park Restoration Corporation helps to manage the park. With a well-defined system of governance, the park has been able to maximize the profits generated from the events carried on in the park. This, in turn, makes Bryant Park Corporation one of the largest U.S. efforts to provide management to a private sector and thrive in its endeavors. This helps sell the name of the park as it is owned or driven with a private management with private funding that runs a public park (Francis, 2003). With all these social amenities and recreation facilities in place, the park has received many awards both regionally and internationally. Bryant Park is a public park owned by private corporations. The corporation does not accept public funds and operates the park with the funds collected within the business improvement district, funds from concessions and the revenues from public activities. The number of activities within the park has grown rapidly thus making some events free and open to the public. The park also has grown gradually to offer sites for the film and television production. This yields revenues for the firm thus facilitating its success. Most people view some places as more public than others, for instance, parks, squares and traditional public forums are large, but places such as malls and work areas are small. Others view front yards and stoops as being partially private while interior homes and back yards are totally private. This evidenced when the city government took over Bryant Park. Before 1970`s when the city government ran Bryant park, the space was not considered as a public space because New York by then had not been an open expanse. This made it lack a central place to define its city center. Later, towards the end of the 19th century New York started to create green spaces. It is during this era that the Bryant Park came under the control of the city government. The city government abandoned the park, and this made it become bushy and unwelcoming to the public. The city government did not live to the responsibility they had bestowed upon themselves. Architectural work came later leading to the reformation of the Bryant Park. Success of this park is dependent on private and public partnership. Designing a public park is crucial to seek answers to the following questions. What are the existing legal structure governing the land resources in the area? Are there homeless groups in the surrounding area? What commercial activities are going on in the area? Does a mobile and commercial vendor visit the area? If so, at what time and in what frequencies do vendors come to the area? How secure is the area form the public activities? What social classes of people do visit the area? Are there underground structures beneath the open spaces? What kind of activities takes place in the park? What design feature fit all the social class? The answers to the following questions will help in investigations in order to come up with the right design for the public park. The answers to the above questions were demanded; therefore, the park was rendered free to the public. Before we get down to give the differences between public and private corporations, it is good to understand what corporations are. A corporation is an organized body formed with the objectives of operating a business. This body works only after being granted a state charter that recognizes it as a separate authorized entity. This entity poses their own rights, advantages, and liabilities differentiated from those of individuals within the entity. These corporations can either be classified as government or public corporations. Exceptions of the classification occur among different municipal systems like for the New York City. The City has an autonomous kind of corporations that have their board of trustees who are closer to the public corporations. But they are subjected to the state and to the city ordinances. The states that use the public corporations have their own approach to shares. Some characteristics arise though this approach like having few or no government control on policy setting at all, independent budget authority, independent accounting methods independence from state civil service regulations, the right to sue and be sued, the right to own property including its own headquarter and total responsibility for its investments of the pension funds. On the other end of the spectrum are theses system classified under government Control Corporation. This cooperation is owned and managed by the government, and they are reset up as separate legal entities different from the rest of the government they are part of them. Government usually creates their own corporations to help them carry out their own activities of business nature. The corporations occupy organizational space between the government departments and pure private market enterprises. In this system, the government controls the policy made, budgets and the accountings that are undertaken in the corporate. They have no board of trustees or have boards with limited authority over the corporation. They are staffed by the civil service personnel’s; they have sovereign immunity from suits; they are unable to involve themselves in investing their funds, and they are unable to own properties with their own name (Taylor, 1986). This means that with governmental corporation, everything is under the governments control and not an individual. The most notable distinction between the public and the government corporation is the placement of investment responsibilities that are placed on the board of trustees. The public corporation system places their investment responsibility on the board of trustees, but in the government corporations, the responsibilities are vested in a different or another states agency that may have or lack its board of trustees. The government corporations also have a permit from the government that allows them to poses a greater operating flexibility because they often find themselves on financially self-sustaining grounds. Conclusion It is evident that Bryant Park has undergone great renovation over a long period of time to make it accommodative to the public. Bryant Park today is one of the best places in New York City. It has experienced a lot of success in the past years due to its location, the recreational facilities present in the park, sports offered in the park and more so the social amenities present in the park. References Halle, D. (2003). New York and Los Angeles: Politics, Society, and Culture--A Comparative View. New York: University of Chicago Press. Carr, S. (1993). Public Space. California: Cambridge University Press. Main, B. G. (2010). Site Furnishings: A Complete Guide to the Planning, Selection and Use of Landscape Furniture and Amenities. Amsterdam: John Wiley & Sons press. Francis, M. (2003). Urban Open Space: Designing For User Needs. Chicago: Island Press. Taylor, S. S. (1986). Public Employee Retirement Systems: The Structure and Politics of Teacher Pensions. Sidney: Cornell University Press. Read More