We made another visit to Fairview Cemetery on Sunday morning, and again I was overwhelmed with disappointment that the city of New Albany, over a period of fifty years or more, seems never to have understood the value of treating our key downtown cemetery as a parkland. Think Cave Hill in Louisville, and consider these links.
Our First Public Parks: The Forgotten History of Cemeteries, by Rebecca Greenfield (Atlantic)
cemeteries as parks/open space (Portland, Maine)
Turning Cemeteries for the Dead into Parks for the Living, by Peter Harnik (cityparksblog.org)
For those who can't understand why the current administration's multi-million TIF bonding for two new parks on the periphery is so irksome to me, this is one of several reasons why I keep bringing it up.
The serial neglect of Fairview's surrounding neighborhoods represents a persistent squandering of an immense quality of life opportunity, one not viewed as pertaining to quality of life by generations of functionaries owing to their absence of imagination, as much or more so than money.
Creative thinking.
When did it escape this burg, and can we lure it back?
No comments:
Post a Comment