Solving Orlando's Park Problem

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has talked about making Orlando truly special, but he's missing a crucial element to that reality.

Have you ever gotten intentionally lost in the forests of London's Richmond Park, hidden yourself away in a meadow in Brookyln's Prospect Park, or gone for a run in Portland's Forest Park? 

If your answer is "no" to all and you’ve never ventured across the living-giving verdure of a massive city park, you likely don’t realize how truly incredible a city can be.

It’s not that a city’s beauty resides solely in nature amidst the city, it’s just a vital component of that. When a city is interwoven with the beauty of the land, something special happens. You're not just a wheel in a cog of a machine, but a person...being yourself in a city. Parks are grounding, encouraging, energizing. They're, quite honestly, one of the most fundamental building blocks of every great city. 

Orlando residents know this. Three years ago, Orlando underwent Project Downtown Orlando ("Project DTO" for short) in an effort to look into the future to see what steps the government needed to take to make Orlando its best. The Project DTO team administered a survey to a broad sweep of Orlando residents asking numerous questions. The crown jewel of that questionnaire asked residents what Orlando needed most. In DTO Outlook, A Downtown Orlando Community Redevelopment Area Plan, they published their results, as well as their suggestions for how to move forward in the future. What was their top response? More park space. Second most frequent response? More places to walk their dogs. 

That’s right, the top two responses were more park space and more park space. 

This deep-seeded desire for park space is substantiated by the numbers that tell the tell of a lack of it within Orlando city limits. In a recent study by The Trust for Public Land, it was determined that the best cities in America have around 8% park space. Orlando has 5%. Ironic, as we call it "the City Beautiful" and beautiful spaces to connect with people and nature outside are so wanting. 

To their credit, Project DTO has sought to add to the green space in Orlando. A series of small parks and veins of beautifully-decorated green space in the median of well-traversed roads is a good start. But they also theorized a park underneath the new I-4. 

You heard that right. The city is low on park space and one of their chief suggestion is to put "green space" underneath a concrete structure with traffic roaring overhead all day. (Not to mention, there are few plants that grow well without light.) The city may want to call it park space and it may be a common area, but it certainly will be difficult to turn that place into one that make parks so beloved by people—peacefulness, tranquility, connecting to the earth, moving around with friends. 

But this response from the city is kinda par for the course. Orlando is littered with tiny parks. A 20 x 20 swath of land here, a 30 x 10 corner lot there, a half-acre park 50% fenced off as a retention pond.

And while those places are yet nice, an acre here or there (or even a couple dozen acres, like in the delightful upcoming “Packing District” park), aren’t going to put much of a dent in the massive need.

What’s Orlando doing?

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has said he wants Orlando to be a world-class city. And by golly, it seems to be on it's way there—world class entertainment and sports venues, growing world-class industries (like hospitality, the creative field, burgeoning world-class restaurants, and world-class theme parks on the outskirts of town.

But Orlando will never become a world-class city without a world-class park. 

What does a world-class park look like? They are beautiful places where people can go to get out into nature and breathe deeply...And. They. Are. Massive. 

For context, here's a list of such parks in major U.S. cities:

500+ Acres

Prospect Park, Brooklyn (500)
Jackson Park, Chicago (500)
Discovery Park, Seattle (500)
Central Park, NYC (800)
Matheson Hammock Preserve, Miami (650)
Crandon Park, Miami (800)

1,000+ Acres

Belle Isle Park, Detroit (1,000)
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco (1,000)
Lincoln Park, Chicago (1,200)
Balboa Park, San Diego (1,200)
Forest Park, St. Louis (1,300)
Memorial Park, Houston (1,500)

2,000+ Acres

Fairmount Park, Philadelphia (2,000)
Rock Creek Park, DC (2,000)
Shelby Farms Park, Memphis (4,500)
Forest Park, Portland (5,000)
Trinity River Project, Dallas (10,000, in development)

That's just in the U.S. Europe is a pantheon of actually excellent parks: London alone has Regents Park (500), Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens (500), Richmond Park (2,400), Hampstead Heath (800), Wimbledon Commons (1,100) and dozens of other parks of hundreds of acres. 

And what about Orlando?

Orlando's biggest park is the 187-acre Bill Frederick Park that we charge admission to and is so far from downtown that most people don't know it exists. The next largest park is Blue Jacket Park at 75 acres. And the size of parks drops off rapidly from there. 

Orlando is beautiful. And those of us who are paying attention really do love it here. But that doesn't change the fact that the beautiful green space that we have here is not nearly enough. We know how amazing Orlando truly is and we want that to show in all ways—including what we lack, a park you can get lost in, remembering not that you're surrounded by concrete and busyness, but wonderful, natural Florida. 

In the parks in all those other cities, the people who planned them did so with the knowledge that they would take decades to reach their maturity. They were planning—and moreover planting—them for future generations. Has Orlando ever had that type of foresight on such a recreational matter? We sold most of the 2,000 acre lot of (military base name) for the Baldwin Park development. That has obviously paid financial dividends to the city (see: tax money) and other benefits to the community, but it is a missed opportunity. 

What would Orlando have to do to put such a park in place? 

Understand the value of such a park far beyond the testable numbers that prove how much money something makes. Find a location. Allocate the resources. Get to work. 

And people would adore it, make it their own. And more and more people would plant roots in Central Florida for the long haul, more would love being here, and more would be proud

Where could such a park go? I don't know. Deleting a whole community off the map? Of course not. Absorbing the Executive Airport into MCO for the 1,000 acres on Colonial? Sounds far fetched, but would be incredible, as the city already owns that land. But the quick answer is: I don't know. Regardless, if we don't start truly thinking in advance on a big-picture, dreamy scale, Orlando will never have the unique life that only a massive park can pump into its lungs. And people will be stuck walking around from small island of grass to small island of grass, longing to be that much closer to a place where they can connect with nature in their home of Orlando. 

We don’t need Frederick Law Olmstead or one of his relatives, just some people willing to do what it takes to bring nature into the forefront of the conversation for city development.