City plans proliferation of small parks

The Nutter administration has developed a plan to convert its huge holdings of vacant lots and asphalt-covered school yards into tree-shaded greens, in a low-cost effort to satisfy a 2009 pledge to add 500 acres of parkland.

The kinds of parks envisioned in the ambitious Green2015 plan, which will be released Tuesday, would be very different from a traditional city park like Rittenhouse Square or Forbidden Drive. Instead of building a few large destinations for recreation, the city would establish an archipelago of green oases on scraps of land, some as small as a quarter acre.

Like many of the Nutter administration's recent initiatives - from the crosstown bike lanes to the new riverfront paths - this one bears out the governmental philosophy that cities can still make public improvements in hard times, but only if they do so incrementally and can get others to pay for them.

So an entire section of the report, prepared by the nonprofit consultant PennPraxis, is devoted to identifying federal and private agencies that provide grants for urban greening.

The report enthusiastically notes that Philadelphia International Airport will be required to replace 82 acres of lost wetlands if a planned $5.3 billion runway expansion goes ahead. Private owners, mainly institutions, will also be enlisted in the greening effort and encouraged to replace surface lots with trees and grass.

"It's a doable plan in a difficult economic time," said Michael DiBernardinis, commissioner of the city's Parks and Recreation Department, which sponsored the report, obtained by The Inquirer.

Within five years, he predicted, the proposals would "reshape the physicality of the city" by softening old factory neighborhoods where greenery is in short supply. It costs about $250,000 to create a one-acre passive park, the report estimates.

The plan's strategy is purposely structured to allow the city to tackle a variety of other urban problems simultaneously. By distributing pocket parks around the city, Green2015 could help Philadelphia provide more play space in underserved neighborhoods, combat childhood obesity by creating exercise space, reduce polluting water runoff reaching the city's rivers, raise property values, and attract new development.

Nutter's earlier Greenworks, in 2009, garnered the city national attention for its ambitious goals.