City Road Podcast

In New York, where anything’s possible, the privatisation of Manhattan's Central Park is even stranger than fiction. I imagine that few people would choose to travel back in time to visit the run down and quite frankly often dangerous Central Park of 1970s Manhattan. But many people don't realise that a casual and relatively safe stroll through Central Park today has come at significant cost to the park’s maintenance workers. "My dream is to have the park system privatised and run entirely for profit by corporations". Ron Swanson, fictional Parks Department Director, American Television sitcom Parks and Recreation. We’re talking to John Krinsky about his new book with Maud Simonet, Who Cleans the Park? and their research about parks management in New York. John and Maud bring the often-invisible work of the park’s maintenance workers into view. What’s exposed is much more that than an underpaid and unvalued workforce, but a set of questions that go to the heart of urban management today. In America, hundr