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Purpose – This chapter will examine the role of Central Park in setting in motion certain practices related to park development as well as revolutionizing park financing in the mid-nineteenth century and again in modern times. It will examine the shift from public financing of parks to the development of public–private partnerships to design, build, fund, and administer urban parks.

Design/methodology/approach – The author takes an historical approach to put contemporary park debates vis-à-vis funding and administration in context. Archival materials are used to examine park financing models all over the country.

Findings – Central Park still continues to revolutionize urban park financing. Cities are cutting back on funding for public parks; as a result, there is a greater reliance on private financing options. Not all parks are in a position to rely heavily on private financing, and this raises questions about access to open space in cities.

Originality/value – The chapter raises questions about equity in the shift toward the private financing of urban parks. It extends the environmental justice discourse to examine open space issues. It examines long-term historical trends in helping the reader understand the contemporary state of urban park financing.

How does information change people's minds? Information studies has generally assumed that when a person encounters a piece of information, they are informed. This does illustrate becoming informed in some cases, but not all. For instance, sometimes misinformed people simply become more entrenched in their views upon encountering new information. This is because, for us humans, many of our beliefs are simply not based on an ongoing balancing of the facts, but rather on post hoc rationalization and cheerleading of particular views that are already held emotionally. Moreover, information informs us in ways beyond the provision of facts: it also shapes us as persons. In recognition of the ethical dimension of information, I suggest that information can also furnish moral knowledge, which can be defined as knowledge pertaining to how one should act in order to live best. Most of the discussions in philosophy on moral knowledge have focused on art, defined broadly to include literature and performance as well as visual art, and there has likewise been research on this aspect of art in information studies. Research in the information involved in religious conversion shows that people are informed, formed, and transformed by experiences with information and documents. I suggest that all information can contribute to moral knowledge and consequently to human understanding and action. To understand this, we must think beyond what is “objectively present” in an information object toward how that object interacts with the human experiencing it.

Much writing on dissenting intellectuals posits a uniform relationship between autonomy from the popular element and social influence. The case of U.S. poets from 1930 to 1975 challenges this, as dissenting poets' sphere of influence grew during the hegemony of populist as well as antipopulist movements. In order to account for this, this chapter draws on the conceptualization of autonomy as a process whose parameters are mutually irreducible and potentially contradictory. Where these parameters are more or less fully synchronized, dissenting intellectuals face a united bloc of opponents that they cannot divide; therefore, they need to fight all of these opponents simultaneously. Where there is little such synchronization, in contrast, they can negotiate temporary alliances with some of their foes, use these alliances to secure gains in more important fronts, and revise their alliances as circumstances change. Twentieth-century United States, this chapter argues, was an example of the latter kind of setting. Dissenting poets were able to use universities and popular element against one another, depending on how they saw their overall situation. When autonomy from universities mattered most, they reclaimed the popular element; when autonomy from the popular element mattered most, they set aside their differences with university administrators and joined the academic ranks. This distinction between greater and less synchronization of the powers, the chapter argues, has implications for political sociology beyond the study of intellectuals.