Survey Conducted By Columbia Doctoral Student Finds Acreage Has Grown By Roughly 1.4 Per Cent, No Visible Construction Has Occurred
Reported for Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose science desk was unprepared for this one.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed in a brief statement Tuesday evening that Central Park is, in fact, now larger than it was at the end of March, by a factor of approximately 1.4 per cent, and that the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation has “no planned response” and “no current explanation”. The confirmation follows a surveying paper released Tuesday morning by a Columbia doctoral student in geodesy, Mr. Daniel Altman-Obo, whose undergraduate senior thesis had, coincidentally, measured the same park.
The Measurement
Mr. Altman-Obo used differential GPS equipment, borrowed over spring break, to re-survey the park’s perimeter against US Geological Survey benchmarks dating to 2019. His measurements, taken over three weekends in April, consistently returned a perimeter approximately 0.71 per cent longer than the 2019 benchmark, with total enclosed acreage approximately 1.4 per cent larger. He checked his equipment. He checked his calibration. He re-ran the survey. The result held. He consulted his advisor, who, per Mr. Altman-Obo, “also could not explain it, but was extremely interested”.
“I am not saying the park has physically grown,” Mr. Altman-Obo said. “I am saying the measurements are larger. I do not have a theory about why. Neither does my advisor. We have sent the data to three senior surveyors. One of them laughed. One of them asked to see it again. The third has not replied.”
The Parks Department Responds
The Parks Department’s statement, issued through the mayor’s office, reads, in its entirety: “The Department acknowledges Mr. Altman-Obo’s survey. The Department cannot, at this time, offer an explanation. The Department has no plans to shrink the park.”
A Parallel Noted
Measurement anomalies of civic infrastructure are, per Science, periodically reported without subsequent explanation. The London Prat’s Gregory piece identified a comparable pattern: systems that are, on closer measurement, slightly different from what the official documents say they are, because a person at the margin has quietly adjusted them.
The Theory
Mr. Altman-Obo has, off the record, offered what he called “a non-scientific theory”: that the Parks Department has, at some point in the last six years, quietly rerouted fencing, paths, or perimeter markers in a series of small adjustments, each one within rounding error, which have cumulatively produced the 1.4 per cent growth. He noted that this would not be, strictly, dishonest. “The park would simply be larger. Which it is.” He declined to say whether he thought this was, on net, good news.
The Public Reacts
New Yorkers reached for comment on the Bethesda Terrace expressed, in varying degrees, delight, confusion, and the unmistakable sense that the city had just, quietly, done a good thing without telling anyone.
More: The Shovel. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/