Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities (W.W. Norton), by Alexander Garvin%u2028

Alexander Garvin’s thesis on the importance of public parks has wider implications about the value of defending the community, especially public spaces, against the encroachments of the windbags and greed jockeys who seek to privatize everything. Public parks were created in the 19th century to give poor and middle-class people a place of their own to relax, play sports and enjoy the sun; they brought beauty to the ugliness of urban sprawl. Parks improve air and groundwater and can sometimes be used to reduce crime. Skinflints such as Scott Walker might want to consider Garvin’s points about how the presence of parks tends to raise real estate values (i.e. property taxes rise without legislative action) and how many parks around the world have found imaginative ways to fund themselves.