Public Pools: A Need for America | Benefits & Access

root4mszW” data-flatplan-paragraph=”true”>Pools are so vital to me that in 2020, one of my biggest concerns was whether the pandemic would prevent public pools from opening. I couldn’t bear to watch a whole swimming season pass me by. (In defense of my screwed-up priorities, this was before I had kids.)

boost moods; it routinely ranks among people’s favorite forms of exercise. When I interviewed Bonnie Tsui, the author of Why We Swimshe told me that being in water gives you “the feeling of both being buoyed and being embraced.” The pressure of the water combined with the release of gravity does something uniquely salubrious to our brains. Sure, you can get this same zing from an ocean or a lake, but not everyone lives near one of those. A pool is a bit of backyard magic, a chance to find transcendence in the everyday.

his swimming lessons left him flabbergasted by “unanticipated ease,when the world seems to divide before us like a perforation and the body feels itself inebriate,or falling.” Though, after Conversi did a “jig of triumph” at the end of the diving board, he was asked to leave the swimming club and find “an organization more suited to your needs and temperament.” Conversi was unfazed: “To have learned to breathe while moving in an alien element is to have begun to master the secret of animal life.”

traveled to the thermal pools of Iceland and noted that “stepping into thermal waters is like stepping into Oz: life changes from the black-and-white of imminent hypothermia to a lustrous, multidimensional world of color and warmth.” The pools are a social hub in iceland; people gather there with their friends and kids. Sounds heavenly.

third place” for people to meet and chill, has existed for decades.In a 1952 call for cities to revitalize themselvesthe developer William Zeckendorf suggested building parks with swimming pools as one way to keep urban workers from fleeing to the suburbs:

wrote a decade ago.Starting in the 1920s, pools did become the kinds of recreation hot spots that Zeckendorf hailed-until they began to desegregate in the ’50s. Rather than continue to use public pools, which welcomed all races, some suburbanites retreated to private club pools, such as the one at the center of a racist incident in McKinney, Texas-the town where I went to high school and where my parents still live. During a party at a private-subdivision pool in 2015, teens who allegedly didn’t live in the community showed up, someone called the police, and an officer tackled a on administrative leave and then resigned; the McKinney police chief said that the department’s policies didn’t “support his actions.” A grand jury later declined to bring criminal charges against him.)

racial tension, Appelbaum wrote. “That complicated legacy persists across the United States. The public pools of mid-century-with their sandy beaches, manicured lawns, and well-tended facilities-are vanishingly rare.” Many public pools have become neglected and underfundedusurped by private pools funded by HOA fees.

urban planner Robert Moses: “It is no exaggeration to say that the health, happiness, efficiency, and orderliness of a large number of the city’s residents, especially in the summer months, are tremendously affected by the presence or absence of adequate bathing facilities.” This summer and in the hot, hot summers to come, America needs pools-for everyone.

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