Creation of the Cooperative Park Studies Unit, GSUC, CUNY
From 1974- 2015 I created and directed a Cooperative Parks Studies Unit of the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Park Service at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Its mission was to conduct research on the human uses of park resources and to participate in federal park planning projects. Over about twenty years of "outdoor research” my collaborators and I have done work in a stunning variety of parks and natural areas, as well as in diverse urban parks. Some of that work is highlighted in these web pages.
Our work would often begin with an invitation from NPS Superintendents to conduct visitor use surveys: who was the park serving in time and space? This research was required for park plans. In 1972 Congress had passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) which demanded more scientifically based knowledge of human uses of protected ecosystems and restored environments. Suddenly social scientific knowledge was in demand at the federal land management agencies.
Congress had also recently passed legislation creating a new generation of “urban national parks and recreation areas” one of which, Gateway NRA, would encompass all the beaches of the Rockaways as well as Jamaica Bay, except the part that was already Kennedy InternationalAirport and Sandy Hook in New Jersey. I couldn’t have gotten closer to home.
You Can Always Go Downtown: National Parks in Cities
Cooperative Park Studies Units: University-Based Science Programs in the National Park Service
My assignment on coming back to NYC from Seattle (Fall semester 1973) was to create a research unit of the Park Service and Dept. of Interior at the City University Graduate Center. We, my new colleagues and I, were asked to conduct research in cooperation with local parks officials who needed social scientific data to achieve their various missions. These would most often be about park planning or issues of human behavior and conflict and safety. Support for this research would come from local, regional and Washington offices. At least that was what I had been assured when I accepted the position while still in Seattle. NPS was creating a number of Cooperative Research Units (devoted to the social sciences) at universities throughout the U.S. The actualities of how to get it all established were still missing, but it was an exciting moment.
In 1972, the U.S. Congress established both the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) in San Francisco and the Gateway National Recreation Area in the New York City area, both designated on October 27, 1972, to preserve natural, cultural, and recreational resources.
In this same period Congress also authorized the creation and funding of a series of National Seashore parks on Cape Cod, Fire Island, Assateague and Chinteague, Cape Canaveral, Padre Island, Texas and elsewhere.
List of national lakeshores and seashores of the United States
Congress also passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1972, which required assessments of the environmental impacts of every major federal project, including those largely dedicated to environmental preservation. My Cooperative Parks Studies at The CUNY Graduate Center soon became involved in the planning efforts the Park Service was engaged in for many of these new units under its aegis.
CNN, 5.24.13
Professor William Kornblum, Graduate Center, CUNY and director of its National Park Service research unit, discusses how and why Americans yearn for contact with nature.
“Nostalgic yearning for contact with nature became an ever stronger theme,” said William Kornblum, a sociology professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center and head of its National Park Service research unit. Yet even at Thoreau’s Walden Pond, “the chugging sounds of the nearby Fitchburg Railroad encroached on the philosopher-poet’s quest for natural simplicity,” said Kornblum.
Cooperative Park Studies Units: University-Based Science Programs in the National Park Service
