The area surrounding Lake park has affluent people living around there (homes valued in the range of $500k - $950k), and the Lake Park Bistro upscale restaurant was just north of the park with the largest parking lot closest to the concentration of Pokestops. Prior to Pokemon GO it was a quiet area with a great view of Lake Michigan from many of the homes along Lake Drive.

I'm inclined to believe that it was not only a combination of the holy grail Pokemon GO location for the greater Milwaukee area, but also a bit of "Not In My Backyard" [1] that led to the augmented reality game ordinance.

[1] - http://milwaukeerecord.com/city-life/lake-parks-pokemon-go-m...

It was wonderful to watch.

I can't wait to see what form of communal AR we see develop over the next 10 years.

Local government in places with a waterfront is almost completely made up of people who have a special interest to champion and spends 90% of it's time bickering about said interests.

That article reminds me of my hometown.

But trying to block the AR game is the wrong approach. They should instead implement a generic way to handle such things. Either fine people, or have some maximum occupancy rules.

A minor nit, but Pokemon go did not increase activity levels for most players.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/12December/Pages/Pok%C3%A9mon-no...

http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6270

More AR games with more fleshed out gameplay could raise activity levels more long term.

This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?

Is the game responsible for people littering? Or tramping grass (seriously, its grass... lets get over ourselves) or flowers... Is the game responsible for that, or are the people who do the wrong thing responsible? This points at the overall shifting of blame for everything that is becoming so common in our culture... put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

All this suggests that locking parks overnight is more about every government's burning desire to "think of the children" and control everything possible than any legitimate concern for public safety.

How much easier is it to enforce no one in the park past $10 than no camping in the park.

> Is the game responsible for people littering?

I feel like you didn't answer my question?

Edit, to clarify: I'm asking what the actual solution is: expecting the city to pay for skyrocketing enforcement? Or letting the park get trashed and then blaming the citizens? Or just closing the park and blaming people for it happening? etc.

> put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

Edit: See edit above. The question isn't whom to blame, the question is how to resolve the issue. Blaming people doesn't generally resolve an issue, but enforcing it or putting in place mechanisms for preventing it or some other tangible action might.

As far as flower-trampling, just shrug and wait for the fad to pass. It's not a big deal.

Perhaps more permanent solution to the problem is in order such as fencing around the flowers getting trampled. End the drug war if you want to save money elsewhere for this.

It would be reasonable to expect that the job of these city officials should be to (a) encourage the people to visit parks even more; and (b) maintain the parks adequately to their usage - if people use the parks more then it obviously costs more to maintain, but it also obviously means that people are getting more benefit from the parks and they want them to be maintained more.

Enforcing the rules about littering and trampling flowers is part of maintaining the park; but if people are routinely staying past park hours (the whole concept of park hours is a bit strange to me, I'd expect parks to simply be unserviced but otherwise available 24/7), then likely that's a sign that these hours should be extended - the purpose of littering restrictions is obvious but the only legitimate purpose of restricted hours is that the population wants the hours to be restricted for safety reasons or whatever; if now it turns out that the population doesn't want that restriction anymore, then it shouldn't exist.

I was just pointing out that "enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc." isn't the solution to them, they see it as the problem.

the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

I do not use any of the Local Parks, I do not pay Pokemon Go, I do not have a use for either

People that use the parks should pay for them, then if there is an increase in activity from something like Pokemon Go that means Revenue also increases to pay for the increased costs to maintain the asset.

I am fine with that, it is not ethical to take money from people by force to pay for things like this, if their was value in the community for a park then the community would find a way to voluntarily pay for it, if there are not enough voluntary support in the community to fund the park then the park should not exist

Even if that were true, National parks are big, which means the additional space taken up by toll collection infrastructure at parking areas (and the staff to man them) aren't a big deal, and they present lots of needs for people to stop and buy things which creates concession opportunities.

This is significantly less true of most (but not all) local parks.

But, anyway, even National Parks funding comes mostly from appropriated funds; fees (both directly from visitors and commercial services) are on the order of a couple hundred million of the single-digit billion dollar annual parks spendibf. And even that amount actually spent doesn't meet upkeep needs; the National Parks have deferred maintenance costs on the order of four times the annual budget.

Source on this? I feel like if this was already the case then the issue of cutting national park funding wouldn't be such a big deal, and yet it is.

The parks weren't just being "used", people were littering, staying after hours, trampling on flowerbeds and stuff. Or did you miss that part of the article?

So many normally sedentary people were getting up and going out and doing shit and getting exercise .. and people still went out of their way to be dicks about it... I don't get it.

Say what you want about the city's misguided attempts at enforcement. But by no means was it in response to "normally sedentary people getting exercise."

These are problems that any park that has high traffic has to deal with. The judge offered reasonable solutions that didn't involve dissuading people from using the park.

> But my no means was it in response to "normally sedentary people getting exercise."

From the article: "Requiring Candy Lab to secure insurance, portable restrooms, security, clean-up, and provide a timeline for an 'event'"

That is very directly a response to normally sedentary people getting exercise - the city wants them out of the park.

No, they're not problems of "high traffic". That would be things like too many people on the lawn above intended capacity, and what not.

The point is that by any common sense definition, the kinds of activities noted by the authorities constitute "abuse", not "use" (as there is no intended allowance of things like trampling flower beds, etc, at any level of capacity). And hence, in any place where you have actual working municipal governance, you'll find that they're dealt with appropriately.

If you don't see the importance of this distinction -- sorry, but you're very confused.