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Excuse me? It's a fact. I said urban park. Philly has urban borders. No other city has close to the same size park system integrated into the city proper. If I was discussing sheer quantity of park, I'd be boosting Jacksonville, FL.
I am pretty sure NYC has more acres overall, and on a relative scale they are comparable. Fairmont has some great aspects and some not so great
The continual claiming of the largest park, and/or largest park system by philly really needs to stop. It's just not true, and I like bragging about actual facts. Kinda makes us look bad.
Not that other cities aren't guilty of similar stuff.
Even if the article is ancient, it's informative. Surprised that claim (about Fairmount) has been that wrong for that long.
On the flipside, unless you enjoy rock climbing, most of what Phoenix calls a park is what we'd call desert wasteland. Everything that's good outdoors in Phoenix (and there are tremendous outdoor activity options there) lies outside the city. The parks themselves have golf, baseball, botanical garden,etc. but in between facilities is sand and rock, yet that all counts as acres towards the park. Not exactly fair.
Even if the article is ancient, it's informative. Surprised that claim (about Fairmount) has been that wrong for that long.
don't feel bad, city PR people twist the truth a little and they are reprinted so much by the media that residents come to think it is true
every city wants claim to fame and people are desperate to buy into it.
Dallas has very good PR, I always laugh when Dallas posters post things like they are getting the Biggest something.
the last one was medical campus. Their new one will probably be among the top 25 largest in the country but the PR person said it was the biggest medical complex project right now. Well posters dropped the project right now part and ran away with the biggest medical complex part not bothering to check that there are medical campuses all over the country bigger.
They also laid claim to the biggest urban park title too, but they failed to notice that what they are making would not even crack the top ten parks. The author of the article had called it a fancy name like 'Urban forest' in order to claim the title of biggest something
Even if the article is ancient, it's informative. Surprised that claim (about Fairmount) has been that wrong for that long.
On the flipside, unless you enjoy rock climbing, most of what Phoenix calls a park is what we'd call desert wasteland. Everything that's good outdoors in Phoenix (and there are tremendous outdoor activity options there) lies outside the city. The parks themselves have golf, baseball, botanical garden,etc. but in between facilities is sand and rock, yet that all counts as acres towards the park. Not exactly fair.
I posted another thing about fairmount park, that I'll just paste here (because I am lazy):
I'm reluctant to get into a detailed response to this, because I don't want to get into a "bashing" type argument, when I am a huge supporter of Fairmount Park.
But I generally think that Philadelphia needs to address the very real issues of neglect with Fairmount Park before trying to boast about it in any national or global context. There are great areas of the park, but many parts of it are an embarassment.
The whole "largest landscaped park" claim is a stretch (not even talking about the lack of maintenance), as the acreage number used for that claim includes East & West Fairmount Park, which are divided by a river and a major highway, and the Wissahickon which, while sort-of adjacent, is not truly contiguous. Neither of those three parts are especially large by themselves. And I also would point out that the Wissahickon is not landscaped at all (which is it's beauty), plus they include the Zoo in the area for West Park. If you use the same methodology, then just the Bronx alone has a bigger park than Fairmount Park.
And the overall Fairmount parks system (9200acres) is nowhere near the largest(another common claim). Nearby NYC's is more than 3 times larger and much better maintained.
And having small neighborhood parks that people can walk to is nothing unusual.
Like I said, I'm really not trying to bash, but I think Philly needs to stop leaning on shaky superlatives & repeating all these questionable feel-good truisms and instead make some active strides into making Fairmount Park into the world class park it should be. And then brag.
I'd love to find an accurate sentence to describe Fairmount as the largest...
Perhaps it is the 'largest contiguous urban historic landscaped park on a river in the USA!' If that can be disproved, kudos to the winner.
Agreed it needs work, lots of it. Much of the park is simply overgrown, and the landscape would be so beautiful. People would buy homes next to the park instead of there being burnt-out crack-houses. This location really gets me: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=philly...,61.44,,0,2.06
And that's actually a nice stretch of park there, next to the driving range, Sedgley Woods (disc golf) and the Smith playground. But the blocks there are mostly burnt-out and boarded up, with only a few brave renovators.
I'd love to find an accurate sentence to describe Fairmount as the largest...
Perhaps it is the 'largest contiguous urban historic landscaped park on a river in the USA!' If that can be disproved, kudos to the winner.
Bigger than the Chales River Esplade, through Boston and Newton, and it connects to the Back Bay Fens, also it connects Via the charles river Dam greenway sort of thing to the Cambridge/someville parts.
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