In the age of video games and attention deficit disorder, "open space" is a dirty phrase. Open space in America's parks is being wiped out, revised, or populated by new structures and parking lots. Municipal officials, wrongly, tend to see it as a void that must be filled, "programmed" to amuse all comers. With the rise of bottom-up planning, community representatives now decide, ex cathedra, that in order for our parks to succeed, they must have ten "focal" points and "ten things to do at each focal point," to quote the website of the Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit in New York City.

Earlier this year, I visited several urban parks around the country: Rochester, N.Y.'s Seneca Park, Atlanta's Piedmont Park, and New Orleans' City and Audubon parks, among others. I found them under siege from a variety of culprits, including zoo expansions (proposed for both Rochester and New Orleans' Audubon); new parking lots (one is planned for Atlanta); and new "destination features," like a sculpture garden in New Orleans' City Park. These parks' collective plight left me dispirited and angry. When was it decided that strolling under a dappled canopy of trees, or over a sloping lawn, is not a sufficient experience in its own right? When did we stop valuing the sound of running water, the humanizing scale and tactile marvels of nature? Who still appreciates historic, moss-covered walls and paths or a landscape designer's choice of plants and ornaments?

This national trend-the cluttering of reposeful park grounds with activity-oriented "focal points"-is lamentable and perplexing, not least because park users themselves aren't demanding it. According to surveys conducted over the past two decades, between 70 and 80 per cent of American park users visit them specifically for passive, reflective experiences, not for entertainment.

Museum-goers have similar priorities. A study last year of visitor satisfaction at the Smithsonian's 14 museums found that, for 60 out of 100 respondents, the most satisfying experience was "seeing the real thing," followed by "gaining information and insight" (40 percent); "spending time with friends and family" (35 percent); "feeling awe and wonder" (33 percent); and "feeling pride in America" (32 percent). A sizable majority of people want the places they visit, whether museums or parks, to possess "authenticity," to be real-and to stay that way.

In Seattle, misguided new plans threaten Occidental Square and Freeway Park, influential modern landscapes designed, respectively, by Grant and Ilze Jones and by Lawrence Halprin. The Jones & Jones firm, best known for its work at the San Diego Zoo, designed Occidental in the early 1970s to revive the city's newly designated Pioneer Square historic district. Halprin's Freeway, built over Interstate 5, was the first park of its kind in the United States; it opened a few years after Occidental, on July 4, 1976.

Occidental is an open, European-style square with a Jones & Jones-designed glass pavilion-now used mainly by transients-and cobblestone paving. Fred Kent, president of the Project for Public Spaces, would like to overhaul the space completely, removing its trees and the glass structure and painting the facades of surrounding historic buildings. He has even proposed installing Astroturf over the uneven cobblestones! While this last idea has found little support, the city may yet replace the cobbles with catalog-ordered bricks.

Likewise, in order to open up views and improve access for proposed new attractions-like an aviary, a spray pool, and a café-the Project for Public Spaces now advocates the removal of a large chunk from Freeway's inspiring central fountain. Why? Isn't this the artistic and cultural equivalent of removing, say, a figure from Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture group The Burghers of Calais?

Seattle's growing numbers of drug users and drug sellers, as well as its homeless population, have gravitated to Freeway. In 2002 the murder there of a blind and deaf homeless woman in broad daylight spurred a citywide effort to revitalize this dangerous space. Safety is, understandably, a major public concern. But it should not be the only consideration. Within an emotional and politically charged atmosphere, small but vocal groups of activists can effectively take control of the public debate, holding workshops and "visioning meetings" to advance their own narrow agendas. The resulting park redesigns may be formulaic or ill-conceived-and they can take on a life of their own.

Besides the destruction of historic fabric and the elimination of open land, another result of short-term plans is the retooling of democratic space. The City Park Golf Course in Baton Rouge, La., for instance, was created "for the common man," according to Golf Digest, "by the common man's golf course architect," a Scottish immigrant and vocal advocate of public golf courses, Tom Bendelow. Bendelow designed almost 700 courses across America, about 100 of which have now succumbed to development. His nine-hole course in Baton Rouge, opened to the public in 1928, was added to the National Register of Historic Places three years ago-the only golf course in Louisiana to be listed. Today its $6 green fees draw a large and diverse number of golfers. Yet the Baton Rouge Recreation and Parks Commission is weighing plans to alter this important historic landscape with a "natural amphitheater" to protect joggers from stray golf balls. Previously, it considered erasing the course altogether to make way for a volleyball court and new buildings incompatible with the landscape.

Other public spaces are in effect being privatized. This can be seen in the partial closing of Manhattan's Bryant Park for two months a year due to special events-for example, the Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week and a car show-and in near-permanent construction of new additions elsewhere, like at New Orleans' Audubon Park and Kansas City's Swope Park. When such additions appear in previously open parkland, the character of the whole landscape is changed irrevocably.

We are subjecting our nation's historic parks to "plop and drop"-the plunking down of formulaic additions and alterations, complete with their own needs for long-term maintenance. In Boston, for instance, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum are both planning to build major new wings. For these they will surrender parkland belonging to Frederick Law Olmsted's famed Emerald Necklace, a chain of six urban parks stretching from the Charles River in Boston to Dorchester, Mass. In its place will rise new exhibition spaces and offices, but also other destination facilities-a visitors center at the MFA, a café at the Gardner.

Check the appropriate box: museum/visitors center, café, amphitheater, sculpture park, spray pool, dog exercise area, skateboard ramp, exercise station. All are associated with more parking and more pavement, all adorned and embellished with off-the-shelf street furniture and lights. Strip away the historic. Make way for special interests (this is often the real objective).

The famous landscape architect and educator Hideo Sasaki (1919-2000) once decried what he called the five Bs-"bricks, banners, balloons, Bradfords [pear trees], and benches." These he saw as empty frills, window dressing for designs conceived in the absence of natural and cultural values. The goal of such designs is often touted as "restoring prosperity and vitality," a stated aim of the National Trust's own Main Street program [ ck ]-which does not, however, favor the abandonment of history. But today "green" too seldom means a generous sweep of trees and lawn, and too often dollars, not the sound of birdsong but the ching-ching-ching of cash registers.

So many nationally significant landscapes have been allowed to fall into disrepair: Kennedy Park in Fall River, Mass.; Tampa's Waterfront Park; Damrosch Park in New York's Lincoln Center; Heritage Park in Fort Worth, Tex.; and many more. Crumbling infrastructure and declining tree cover result from deferred maintenance and its consequence, lack of use. Signature fountains remain dry, walkways become difficult to navigate, and the design intent of plantings is lost. Finally, the designer's original vision may be labeled outdated.

Let's draw a line on the cracked pavement: The past must be deemed relevant. We must no longer tolerate a lack of understanding on the part of those who oversee our public spaces.

In many urban settings today, fractured communities abut public landscapes where old and young, rich and poor must coexist. These spaces can work. In both Chicago and Louisville, thanks to the efforts of Chicago mayor Richard Daley and Susan Rademacher, director of the Louisville Olmsted Park Conservancy, people who live near and play in city parks have become their greatest defenders. Public and private investment and strong outreach programs ensure that the parks will continue to be well used and cared for.

Those of us who value continuity are increasingly cast as "standing in the way of progress" or "out of touch." Imagine that we didn't use such labels. Imagine that we built a common foundation of knowledge to guide the planning process, before new designs were given form.

The resulting parks and open spaces would not only drive neighborhoods' revitalization. They could celebrate regionalism and the power of design, and nurture a new generation of informed citizens. But this will not happen until more of us demand it.

Charles A. Birnbaum, is the coordinator of the National Park Service Historic Landscape Initiative and the founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation.

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