On the surface, perhaps, the condition of the city's parks and the prospects for economic growth in the city would seem to be two wildly divergent topics. Economists and city planners would prefer to focus on quantifiable facts and economic data. Yet, as anyone who has ever picked up Malcolm Gladwell's "Tipping Point" knows, little things can make a big difference, and small quality of life issues can rapidly have a compounding effect on the life and vibrancy of any urban area. To take just one example from Gladwell's book -- former Mayor Giuliani and members of his administration read the book, eager for insights on how small quality of life issues (the infamous squeegeemen, graffiti, broken windows, etc.) could build into something much bigger in a very short period of time. That's when Giuliani & Co. decided to attack graffiti in the city and to shut down the squeegeemen. Each night, they would meticuloulsy scrub the New York subway cars for any signs of graffiti, even going so far as to develop a new graffiti-resistant paint for the subway cars. The idea was to break the morale of the graffiti artists and to inspire hope and pride in New Yorkers.

So, flip the clocks forward to the present time. Now it's not graffiti or squeegeemen, it's public parks that are infested with drug needles, condoms and bodily excrement. Yesterday, Timothy Williams of the New York Times wrote a heart-wrenching account of how City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe is turning his back on some of the parks in the city, like University Woods in the Bronx. The article was chock full of money quotes, like Mr. Benepe arguing that the University Woods park was really just a "vestigial landscape." When pressed about the poor shape of some of the city's parks, Mr. Benepe basically just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Let nature take its course."

Daily Gotham was all over Benepe yesterday, taking him to task for his cavalier approach to city parks. Echoing Gladwell's notion of a Tipping Point, Daily Gotham warned that "those little problems Benepe would like to ignore will become entire neighborhoods in the Bronx, Harlem, Flatbush and Flushing." (Thanks, Dorothy)