Open access vs. donors' influence

But the tail can seem to wag the dog, with the definition of "park" changing based on donor requirements.

The original $150 million public budget for Millennium Park was "nothing but a garage with grass over it," says Mr. Uhlir. Instead, the new $475 million space includes numerous amenities - a bicycle transportation center and a densely landscaped garden as well as the theater, bandshell, sculpture, and fountain - each made largely to the donors' order and all on only 24.5 acres.

No wonder parks subsidized by private money tend to be more cluttered - or full of amenities, as the case may be - than those supported by tax money. They have to satisfy donors' desire to commemorate themselves. Great parks of the 19th century typically included similar monuments, notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park and the museums clustered in St. Louis's Forest Park and Chicago's Grant Park.

"People don't want to pour their money into generic green space," says Professor Ryan.

But private money goes to public facilities for a simple reason: Public money isn't available. Chicago's choice was not between an arts park built with public money and one built with private money, but between an arts park built with private money and no arts park at all. Likewise, the various conservancies managing public parks nationwide came into being because even crown jewels like Central Park were being neglected by city governments strapped for cash for garbage collection and schools.

Private donations may increase the amount of money available to parks, or they may simply drive out public money, letting city governments off the hook.

New York City has seen both trends. In Central Park, "no matter how much money was raised, the city promised not to reduce the fair share Central Park would get," says Mr. Harnick of the Trust for Public Lands. "So three times as much goes there as would otherwise."

But in the city's lesser-known parks, New York's Independent Budget Office found in 1997 that private contributions did not make up for cuts in the city's parks budget.

Even if there is additional private funding, it may not be equitably distributed. Donors tend to support parks in high-profile locations. "Would the same money have been leveraged for pocket parks in neighborhoods where Marshall Field doesn't want to put his name?" asks Professor Ryan. "Never."

Pittsburgh addressed the inequity issue by transforming a proposal for a Schenley Park Conservancy into an agreement that a public-private partnership would support all four of the city's major parks.

Groups like the City Parks Foundation in New York support parks in low-income neighborhoods, but their fundraising is dwarfed by that of the conservancies funding higher profile parks.

The US leads the way in privatization of public space, but it has a few followers, such as Britain. Canada, on the other hand, remains firmly in the public-funding camp, as does France. While the Chinese government has begun charging user fees, those are to limit use of parks overwhelmed by demand rather than to alleviate the burden of public funding.

As for the US in the future, "it would be no surprise if all new parks were expected to be paid for privately," Ryan says, "even the national parks."

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