PART IV: Notes on Parks and Recreation Facilities
Pittsburgh: Main Thoroughfares and The Down Town District
Frederick Law Olmsted report to The Pittsburgh Civic Commission, 1910
page 116
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the neighborhood. The condemnation process, preceded by obtaining options where possible, takes all the land at one and the same instant, and the cost is that of land in a parkless district.
Delay is apt to add but little to the cost of acquiring parks in built-up regions where land and building values are reasonably stable, whereas it adds enormously to the cost in regions at the growing margin of the city. Here, where the greater city of the future is being made, is surely the opportunity to save the large cost of supplying a built-up district with neighborhood parks.
It should be the invariable rule, as it is in some of the states of Germany, that the amount of land which will be required to meet the public needs of the locality when fully developed should be set apart as a necessary incident to the subdivision of land. The method of setting apart such lands in a district which is subdivided and put on the market by a single owner would normally be dedication, as in the case of streets; but where the area to be subdivided is controlled by a number of different owners, the City might have to purchase or condemn the necessary public spaces and assess the cost upon the whole district benefited, as it frequently has to do with streets that run through the lands of several owners. A rigid and universal city regulation as to the reservation of open spaces would remove the competitive pressure which now forces many real estate owners and promoters to adopt, as a pure matter of business, an illiberal and short-sighted policy in the layout of land.
Some of the most successful suburban real estate operators in the northeastern states have satisfied themselves, and are now operating on the principle, that the dedication of land for local park purposes, up to a reasonable amount, if so arranged as not to interfere with the lotting system, actually increases the net returns from the operation. On a plat which was drawn by Wood, Harmon & Company to illustrate the application of this principle, about 30 per cent of the area was devoted to streets (about the normal figure for Pittsburgh) and about 7-3/4 per cent to the park.
Rural Parks
The large rural park ought to provide something quite different from the neighborhood park. Except for those who live near it and for whom it may serve incidentally as a local park also, it is remote from the people, can be visited only occasionally and with some effort, and it will
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