Showerthought: My trip to the new downtown park in Cincinnati made me rethink 'green spaces'

Everyone says adding more parks fixes city problems, but the one I saw was just a flat, empty lawn with no shade or seating, so nobody used it. It cost over 2 million dollars and feels like a total waste that planners just checked off a list. Has anyone else seen a public project that looked good on paper but failed in real life?

2 comments

2 Comments

jenny_gonzalez21d ago

Totally agree with the "zero connection to real life" part. It feels like they design these places for a photo in a brochure, not for actual people who need a bench or some trees. You spend all that money and get a space that just sits empty. What's the point of that? It makes the whole idea of adding green space feel like a hollow promise.

jake_chen21d ago

Ugh, that is so frustrating to hear. It's like they built a park just to say they built a park, without thinking about what makes people actually want to go there. Two million for a patch of grass? What a total miss. You see this all the time where the plan looks good in a meeting but has zero connection to real life. Makes you wonder who these projects are even for.