For Sale: The Community's Identity!

Somehow I missed it, but NYC's Parks Department has put a lot of naming rights up for sale recently. This comes on the heels of the MTA's plan to sell the name of Atlantic-Pacific to a bank.

It troubles me to see this because the historic names of places have a much deeper meaning than people admit. It's important to think of, for example, Central Park as a place with a rich history and not simply sponsored by whatever corporation is able to pay the bills this year. Naming places as monuments is a link between our past, present and future - I for one don't feel comfortable telling people "Well this USED to be McCarren Pool, but then we needed cash so it was AIG Pool, but then they went bankrupt and we sold the name to Coca-Cola, but they decided that the free advertising wasn't worth the money so they sold the contract to Proctor & Gamble..." and so on.

When I lived in Washington DC in the 1990s, we had a severe budgetary crisis that cost us a community radio station. The city owned the frequency (90.1 FM) and sold it - to C-Span - and we lost a vital and important voice in the community in exchange for a short-term fix to a long-term problem. This is similar; selling our identity for a quick cash infusion in these times is not the kind of stewardship this city needs. What we call the spaces that create our worlds creates a community and identity that is far more valuable than $3,000,000 that will be spent all too quickly, leaving all of us culturally poorer in the long run.