Public space is cherished both by the people who use it and the politicians and governments that create it. But a crucial part of a public space’s stewardship, operations and staying power regularly goes overlooked: management.

Public space management is the nuts and bolts of operating a public space, covering sanitation, maintenance of street furniture and green space, sourcing and scheduling programming, budgeting, and so much more. Without proper staffing, funding and attention to maintenance, it’s easy for a once-loved public space to fall into disrepair.

Far too often, public space management is funded piece-meal, ad-hoc or even neglected completely. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Open Plans, a nonprofit that advocates for making New York City’s streets livable for all residents, recently proposed a plan for municipally-funded local Public Space Teams to handle stewardship, community coordination and facilitation.

We believe all cities can learn from this idea.

Piecemeal solutions

Studies have shown that sufficient management increases use of public spaces, and that quality public space increases economic activity. Recognizing this, cities are beginning to think more strategically about long-term maintenance of public space projects.

San José, Camden, Cincinnati and Lexington were highlighted for their maintenance projects by Reimagining the Civic Commons, an initiative that often highlights stewardship in cities. Those projects focused on street design, regular cleaning schedules, and volunteer and community engagement.

The result is much larger than simple maintenance; it demonstrates these cities’ commitment to residents and to the built environment. A Philadelphia Parks & Recreation official put it aptly: “Maintenance is trust building.”

Here in New York City, there are a patchwork of promising initiatives. The Clean City Alliance, a privately-funded program run by the Sanitation Foundation, provides supplemental sanitation services to busy commercial corridors. Part of the goal of the Clean City Alliance is to provide supplemental sanitation to commercial areas that may not be covered by a Business Improvement District, a collection of businesses in a given area that often provide those types of services.

And here, some local groups receive supplemental sanitation and maintenance assistance from city-funded contracts like the Horticultural Society of New York (the HORT) and the ACE Program. Volunteer and nonprofit groups like the 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition, 31st Avenue Open Streets Collective and the North Brooklyn Parks Alliance coordinate management of their spaces; some receive assistance from the HORT and the ACE Program.

But funding is a significant obstacle in many cases for volunteer and nonprofit groups in New York City and elsewhere. Without the resources, many groups are forced to rely on insufficient, unreliable volunteer work or foot the bill themselves. This creates inequities between groups who can privately fundraise from neighbors to pay for those services and those who can’t.

Montreal provided an encouraging model last year when the city government committed to funding a number of designated pedestrian areas by allocating $700,000 CAD (roughly $500,000 USD), providing the money to merchants associations to put together the areas.

A comprehensive model for public space management

Still, too many of these examples rely on private funding, volunteer labor or are only a pot of money rather than a holistic solution. Each of these approaches runs the risk of exacerbating inequities: What neighborhoods are chosen for private funding? Usually, the more wealthy, commercial areas. What organizations and neighborhoods can generate a volunteer base strong enough to sustain a public space? Usually, neighborhoods with wealthier residents with more time on their hands. And who receives a grant to operate a public space? What if there isn’t an organization to receive the grant in the first place?

This is why we published Framework for the Future, which offers a model for cities to better manage their public spaces at a local level, centered around Public Space Teams.

These Teams consist of two city positions — a Public Space Facilitator and Community Coordinator — as well as a number of contracted Public Space Stewards. They would be an arm of the city; here in New York City, it would fall under the Department of Transportation, and in other cities perhaps under a public works or infrastructure department.

Facilitators head the team and manage the Community Coordinator and Stewards. They handle the high-level planning aspects of a public space: liaising between the government and local partners, identifying new spaces in an area ripe for public space creation, and working with local groups to determine how a neighborhood’s public space can evolve.

Community Coordinators handle the majority of the outreach. They speak with local partners and residents about what they need on a day-to-day basis, conduct outreach to ensure neighbors know what’s going on in their neighborhood, and field questions and concerns from residents. And Stewards are the boots on the ground. They provide the supplemental sanitation and maintenance like moving street furniture, cleaning up trash and graffiti, and maintaining green infrastructure.

Each team would have its brick and mortar office where they can serve constituents. In New York City, we determined that a full-scale program would require one Public Space Team per each community district (a unit of local governance), resulting in 59 of these teams. We could of course begin with smaller-scale pilots. Not every city would need 59 teams, and often, far from it.

The benefits of such a system would be numerous. All neighborhoods — including less patronized commercial corridors and residential neighborhoods — would be served and receive not only public space, but adequate management. More broadly, public space management would no longer fall by the wayside, or only be prioritized in a handful of neighborhoods or projects.

This vision is ambitious, but it’s what we need and deserve. It’s time to stop just creating public spaces. It’s time to manage them, too.

This post was originally published on Next City.