Star Tribune: Questions | Jon Gurban
Jon Gurban is the new superintendent of Minneapolis' park system, a collection of 170 park properties, 6,400 acres of land and water and about 50 recreation centers. His three-year contract started Jan. 1.
How has the park system changed since you were a kid?
When I grew up in Minneapolis in the late '50s and early '60s, even though I look a lot younger than that -- I hope your photographer caught that OK, got me on a good angle (he said jokingly)-- Minneapolis was pretty homogenous. It was about 98 percent white, so if you went to a park in southwest Minneapolis the amenities that were in that park were the same ones that were in northeast Minneapolis. Everybody was playing baseball and football, and tennis was just starting to get popular. That's no longer the case. The neighborhoods are different. They're much more diversified, and we need to embrace that concept.
How do you plan to balance the environmental preservation and development of parks?
The environmental aspect of what parks and recreation does is becoming increasingly important because development and other things seem to be crowding nature out of the city. We are blessed with the Mississippi River. It gives us a great opportunity to protect the environment, understand nature a little bit more. We're blessed with those lakes in that they've been preserved for the public benefit. It's even more important now because of technology. Technology is crowding out our space. ... What that means for the environment is that we need to have areas in our system that allow people to pause and reflect. That's what's so great about our lakes. We have ordinances there that do not allow motors on boats ... Somebody ought to be able to go down to the lake and have a peaceful time.
Chao Xiong, January 3, 2005, Star Tribune