Parks now?

It is interesting to see parks within their urban setting to start to understand the relationship between urban fabric and parkland. Apparently Olmsted‘s Central Park faced something of a crisis in the 1970s and was revived in the 1980s through a major restoration project.

So the times change and people demand new things of their parks? After the French Revolution fortuneately the true value of Versailles was recognised…So hopefully designers and the public will be able to recognise the value of the past when refurbishing green spaces for the future.

2 thoughts on “Parks now?

  1. Tom Turner

    The story of the restoration of Central Park is a dazzling example of making things happen. I believe the ingredients were: (1) individual drive (2) new funds, partly from the City but also raised from the wealthy folk who live near Central Park (3) the zero tolerance approach to New York’s policing made the city a much safer place – though New York’s jails were filled up and I guess they became much more dangerous places. My own belief is that most parks need resident groups to have a management role in parks. User Groups and Friends of the Park are not enough. Parks suffer when they are treated as as job creation schemes for municipal workers.

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