If it looks like a park, and people sit in it like a park...

"[New York state's highest court] is making a big mistake even hearing the crazy anti-NYU lawsuit to designate strips of village streets as parkland," says The Daily News.

Hoping to block development, opponents focused on four strips of land... Owned by the city Department of Transportation... DOT let the Parks Department manage the properties on the condition that DOT could reclaim them. Now, the city plans to give NYU use of the strips to get into and out of the construction site � then rehabilitate them with full park designation.

Here is where the opponents� loony claims enter the picture. They say that, because the land looks like a park, and because people like to sit on the benches, it became a park with the full legal protections afforded to parkland. Although DOT holds title, although the law classifies the strips as streets, although the city repeatedly refused requests to convert them formally into parkland, the opponents say the parcels became parks simply because dogwalkers cleaned up after their animals there.

A unanimous Manhattan Appellate Division threw out the case by affirming that a property owner cannot lose control over land just because someone else likes to relax on it. Unbelievably, the Court of Appeals saw grounds to question such common sense.

Loony claims?