PARKS AND OPEN SPACES 119 



life-tenancy, lease-backs and other legal ways of keeping private lands 

 in open space uses can be applied. 



In summary, we must hold on to what we have in city parks 

 and open spaces. 



We must vastly increase public ownership and public controls 

 over open spaces to give shape and form to our urban areas and 

 act now ! 



We must develop and use private action through trusts and with 

 sharpened tools for preservation of open spaces in private ownership. 



Mrs. JACOBS. A Federal renewal official has remarked (not pub- 

 licly, but in my hearing) that the open-space program will be useful 

 because it will justify taking city areas and removing people who 

 cannot be dislodged otherwise. 



If beauty does become another excuse to uproot Negroes, and 

 another device to dismember neighborhoods coveted by developers 

 then we may be sure that beauty will get an ugly name. 



Let us suppose, perhaps wistfully, that this crusade for beauty will 

 aim at bringing pleasure and delight to all city people. 



In that case, as far as parks and open spaces are concerned, the 

 first order of business must be to reform park maintenance and 

 operation. When we speak of beauty, character, or even usability 

 and cleanliness, we are talking of quality. Park quality, unlike 

 quantity, cannot be bought with capital grants. Park quality re- 

 quires, forever and forever, good, healthy operating budgets. 



I assume you are aware of today's typical deteriorations; neglected 

 plantings, broken equipment, pockets of litter, disintegrated pave- 

 ments. I assume you are aware of the dreary and humdrum designs 

 that anticipate perfunctory maintenance. More parks has a nice 

 sound, but what does it mean? Today it means that manpower 

 and money already spread much too thin will have to spread thinner. 



This does not mean we need be defeatist about affording more 

 city parks and outdoor recreation. But it does mean that it is irre- 

 sponsible to wish more parks upon cities that lack funds to maintain 

 those they have. 



I am proposing three interlocked programs: Employment, train- 

 ing and experimentation, all three to be financed and generously 

 financed too by the Federal Government. Nobody else can afford 

 to be generous. 



Under the employment part of the program, a cooperating city 

 would receive annual grants for park operation. In return, the city 



