The Esplanade Association (TEA) and the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) recently held “visioning” workshops, inviting everyone to dream dreams about the Esplanade. The Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy also held public meetings recently, characterized by charges that the Conservancy has not invited enough people to consider its plans.

Some critics of the Conservancy complain that the conservancy form of park management allows secrecy. They say a conservancy fosters the interests of a few over those of the public. Others think a conservancy with its private-public legal structure, state appropriation and big-ticket donors is the practical solution in this era of no-tax fervor.

Critics exist also of the way the Esplanade is managed. They blame DCR and TEA for not having enough clout to stop what they considered an appropriation of public land by the Red Sox and the Ebersol family when those entities created fenced-in ball fields between the Longfellow Bridge and the Museum of Science Bridge. A conservancy would have more power, they say, and TEA officials say they have considered forming such an entity.

Two parks. Two governing and funding systems. Let’s see how they compare.

The parks are both linear—the Esplanade is three and a half miles long, the Greenway about a mile long. Both parks were created and have been enhanced with a mixture of public and private funds.

The stakes are high in both parks since they lie beside dense, historic areas—tidal areas that became the Bulfinch Triangle, hospital land, Beacon Hill and the Back Bay in the case of the Esplanade, and tidal areas around the Greenway that now serve as the harbor’s edge and hold a mix of historic and new buildings in the financial district.

Both parks have roadways forming barriers. The Greenway resulted from burying the Central Artery and a mom-and-apple-pie attitude that parkland was the best use for the swathe of land that became available. But parkland with wide roads on either side can be as big a divider of the city as the elevated roadway was, and once the Greenway was built, some people regretted that we had made the whole thing a park, but there it is.

The Esplanade also resulted from a public works project, not burying, but filling in the Charles River once its dam was in place. With two major rearrangements to its topography by the 1930s and another change in the 1950s to build Storrow Drive, the Esplanade gave Bostonians access to the river. But Storrow Drive is a barrier, with users having to negotiate limited, tortuous paths over pedestrian walkways.

Both parks have significant needs. The heavily used Esplanade needs significant repairs. The Greenway needs reasons for people to come.

The parks are different too. The Esplanade has been around in one form or another since 1910, when it was criticized for providing no shade and not living up to its promise. The Greenway is only two years old, and its promise? We’re hopeful.

The most significant difference is in funding. The Conservancy’s 2010 budget is about $6 million, with $4 million coming from various state coffers and private contributions of $1.8 million. The cash-strapped DCR estimates it dedicates approximately $400,000 to the Esplanade.

The Esplanade Association, a grassroots group founded by neighbors to aid the park, has over its ten years raised between $3 and $4 million and has been a catalyst for another $3.5 million contributed directly to DCR for horticulture, benches, sports fields, drinking fountains and docks. TEA and other Charles River-focused organizations have also provided hundreds of volunteers.

Parks all over the nation are under duress, and less money has to go further. Partly because of the anti-tax influence, lawmakers realized coming up with public funds to take care of the Greenway would be difficult. So they created a conservancy, which has worked well in Central Park and Bryant Park in New York City.

The Esplanade Association and DCR are both relatively new. The Greenway Conservancy is very new. They are feeling their way through minefields of how inclusive to be in their planning and how to fund maintenance and improvements in a time when anti-tax fervor is at a high.

I suggest we follow both park management systems to see how well they work. With its location beside the river and its greenery, the Esplanade shows that even a neglected, pitifully funded park can be loved and used. The Greenways shows that a park that is essentially a median strip needs something more to make it work. It is true that the Esplanade appears more open to public processes. But Boston has great examples of public processes that have failed to benefit the public. The Conservancy is sometimes described as despotic, which is maybe what it needs to be to get the Greenway started. And private entities sometimes work magic for the public.

It all boils down to the people in charge. Whether they proceed in a warm and fuzzy way in which everyone has a say or make many decisions on they own, they’ll succeed if they are seen as ultimately working for the public good.