The National Park Service doesn’t understand cities, or how parks in cities function. They operate parks in DC the same way they operate Yellowstone, with a focus on rural-style limited access and conservancy rather than urban-style openness.

This is a big problem for DC, since NPS owns the National Mall, Rock Creek Park, most of the circles and squares, and a ton of other properties in the city, almost all of which are mismanaged given their urban context. Corner plazas that should be open all the time close at dusk. Statues that were built for people to sit on are fenced off. The Arboretum thinks too many people visit. Rock Creek Park is under programmed compared to other large city parks like Central Park or Golden Gate Park. The only mode of transportation access allowed on the National Mall is expensive tourist trams. Park Police stomp out any expressions of freedom at the monument for the country’s most libertarian president. And, most recently, we’re told that NPS thinks bikes would “destroy the nature” of the National Mall.

Since the NPS (and in the case of the Arboretum, the Dept. of Agriculture) is a federal agency, neither the city nor its residents can do much of anything to argue in favor of the position that city parks should be available for use by city people. But there is one person who might be in a position to make a difference: DC’s non-voting Congressional representative Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Would it be possible for Eleanor to pressure NPS to treat its urban properties more appropriately? Would legislation be appropriate? Would a Congress that can’t agree on DC voting rights be amenable to loosening inappropriate regulations applied to DC parks?

As a District resident I want Ms. Norton to continue working on full representation for DC as much as anyone, but in the mean time I also wonder if this is the sort of shorter-term problem that we should be asking for her help to solve.