In 2009 Merrifield opened Merrifield Park, its first tangible step towards creating a community from the disorder of the Gallows Road/29 corridor. At less than a quarter acre, it’s hardly a monument of accomplishment, but its very restrained style shows that planners understand the end goal of urbanization. Northern Virginia has become enthralled with one-ups-man style design, where a previous project is used as precedent to be surpassed. This is unhealthy and leads to false metrics in measuring what “improvement” really is. Should a 13,000 sqft civic plaza which is popular with residents be viewed as less successful than a 2-acre field that goes unused most of the day? Of course not.
When it comes to urban parks, if they get too big its like cramming a country house couch into a small studio apartment. The couch might be great, but it overwhelms the room. The same thing happens when we take valuable real estate in the heart of a city and proclaim bigger is better, using up functional space in a reckless fashion. In this way, smaller, but still functional parks should remain the design basis for most urban settings. Providing shade and recreational space more often to more residents that don’t necessarily want to walk all the way to one centralized behemoth park.
Now that is not to say that having a central green isn’t also a great planning concept. Often these help create community connection through events, concerts, and social interaction. My point is to say that these should be a unique, individual space, not one that is reflected with 30 different projects all around the city. Assuming there is still a central green somewhere in the city already planned, developers shouldn’t be told to provide bigger parks, they should be asked to incorporate more smaller parks. Instead of one 4 acre park, request 10 parks of varying smaller sizes dispersed in an incorporated manner around the project boundaries.
Central Park is a beautiful amenity for residents in Mid-Town Manhattan that surely New Yorkers would never allow to be removed. However, it also poses issues with lack of police presence and crime at night due to its sheer size, large costs for maintenance, lawncare, landscaping, water quality improvements, and creates a gash in the urban fabric of transportation and land use. We have to understand both the benefits and detriment of these kind of parks, and not simply demand more more more for the sake of it being bigger. While ball fields and recreational megacenters have been shown to be great amenities and able to host sports leagues around Northern Virginia, they have also been the site of numerous illegal activities ranging from gang violence to drug sales. Instead of one mega center, why not disperse the activities around Tysons Corner to give the most residents the easiest access to sports fields?
In this way Merrifield has got their act together. They understand that the only important metric is the happiness of residents and economic well being of the region. The Merrifield Streetscape Design Guidelines recently published incorporates this principal in its discussion of pocket parks which should be evenly dispersed. On the other end of the spectrum we find Tysons Corner development plans indicating a need for 20 ball fields based on the Park Authority report. 20 ball fields for 100,000 residents? This doesn’t even include the inherent fields that will be incorporated with schools and private recreational facilities for resident neighborhoods. Recently there has also been discussion on whether the standard 2-acre model for recreational open space should be increased to 4-acres in certain locations. We need to figure out how to do more with less, that is real urbanism.
I am all for recreational fields being put in place, as well as larger landscape parks, but lets try to accomplish this without a heavy hand. This isn’t a one size fits all scenario in Tysons Corner, so we shouldn’t incorporate standards that treat it as if it were. Instead of trying to simply meet the numerical number that someone has decided is “required” for residents, let’s figure out organically where these elements should be planned and try to avoid provisions which encourage one large park contribution as opposed to several smaller parks.