

Back yards vs city parks - wyclif
http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/09/benSlivkaAndBackyardsVsCit.html

======
arethuza
An approach that works rather well here in Edinburgh is private shared gardens
- the owners of properties in an area have a large shared garden with
controlled key access. Everyone pays fees (I think ours are about £200 a year)
- which is a bargain as far as I am concerned, especially as we have neither
the time or the skills to look after a garden properly!

You can see about half of our shared gardens here:

<http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gr9iFLntf8dAesyBFxUSnQ>

[NB not my picture]

------
jim_h
NYC has backyards, if you consider that NYC consists of 5 boroughs. Most of
the backyards (and houses) just are not in Manhattan.

------
ojbyrne
So something that's been bugging me lately about NYC. Why isn't Park Avenue
adjacent to the park?

~~~
bhousel
I've wondered this myself. Turns out Wikipedia has the answer:

"Park Avenue was originally known as Fourth Avenue and carried the tracks of
the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. The railroad
originally built an open cut through Murray Hill, which was covered with
grates and grass between 34th and 40th Street in the early 1850s. A section of
this "park" was renamed Park Avenue in 1860. In 1867, the name applied all the
way to 42nd Street. When Grand Central Depot was opened in the 1870s, the
railroad tracks between 56th and 96th Streets were sunk out of sight, and, in
1888, Park Avenue was extended to the Harlem River."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_%28Manhattan%29#His...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_%28Manhattan%29#History)

