Architect Emilio Jose Brea Garcia reminds overenthusiastic city mayors today that there is such a thing as a park. Brea expresses his concern that after the success of turning a stretch of the sea-bordering Malecon into a park by closing it off on Sunday’s, city governments are forgetting that residents have the option of many other parks where the activities being relocated to city avenues should be carried out on Sundays. Brea expresses his concern that the mayors of other city areas now also want to take over important avenues – Venezuela and Espana, for example — to turn them into “parks.” Brea says this practice is a contradiction because the parks are areas conceived for these activities without affecting traffic. He explains that Santo Domingo has 134 kilometers of green areas in six parks located within the city limits, mentioning the zoo, the botanical gardens, the Mirador del Sur and Mirador del Este, and the Parque Litoral del Sur (Malecon), that are being underused. He furthermore expresses that no sane person could fathom closing streets and avenues when there are so many empty parks that no one visits and that, while attractive on their merits, have been abandoned. He warns: “If we continue this trend, the city will become a driver’s trap on Sundays, while the parks will be deserted.”