Parks

soil mixes, automatic irrigation, soil moisture sensors, for example) have supported what amounts to experimental gardening on building walls and roofs. Product manufacturers have designed and marketed specialized support systems and products for building integrated gardens. In the case of Patrick Blanc, he holds numerous patents for his vertical garden innovations. Gardens are generally spaces to be experienced passively for enjoyment or for their sensual inspiration and health benefits. They also enhance the aesthetic aspects of the space and surrounding built environment as well as increase the economic value for development. Gardens are often Figure 6.13 Roof garden, Lake Merritt, Oakland, California. contemplative spaces to be experienced through the senses while parks are places to exercise the body by individuals, or places to visit when engaging in sports with others. Both can be places for socializing. In the case of parks, the process is, for the most part, socialization through activity while for gardens, socialization is a more passive interaction. Put simply, gardens are a special place for the mind while parks are places for the body. There are of course exceptions to this simplistic characterization of the two types of outdoor spaces.

Both the New York City Park Department and the US National Park Service contain the word park in the name of their organization. In the case of the New York City Park, parks have been established primarily to serve the outdoor recreation and in some case a diverse range of entertainment wishes of urban dwellers. The system of parks also supports specialized purposes, such as educational (botanic gardens and zoos) and social (community gardens for the production of fresh produce). The word park in the US National Park Service holds another meaning. The word refers to natural—in some cases, wild— landscapes or properties including historic sites and structures that have been set aside to conserve specific ecosystems, wildlife species, historical sites and property, memorials (for people or events), and other historical or culturally significant places. Other departments, including the US Forest Service and the National Wildlife Service, oversee large expanses of federal lands for purposes that include resource management of forests, minerals, and animal and fish conservation. These federal agencies also support human activities, such as backcountry hiking, skiing, hunting and fishing, wildlife viewing and education, and other outdoor recreation activities. The prime mission of the US National Park Service is not recreation as is generally understood in the establishment of city and municipal parks. That is not to say municipalities do not manage historically or culturally significant properties, as they most definitely do. The Emerald Necklace park system in the City of Boston primarily serves an outdoor recreation function for its citizens. The Emerald Necklace also was created to solve flooding problems in the city with lands set aside

and developed to manage storm water, in addition to serving recreation uses, including organized sports, picnicking, boating, and trails.

Parks can be found in all sizes from small “vest pocket parks,” a half-acre in size or smaller, created on slivers of leftover urban spaces and suburban areas to larger parks serving multi-purpose functions of 5–10 acres (2–4 hectares). There are large city or regional parks of 500–1000 acres (200–400 hectares) also containing multiple functions including nature trails, horseback riding, a golf course, a zoo, a botanical garden, and river-based greenways.

The reason city, state, and federal governments have established their park system was to meet the evolving needs of the citizens these organizations serve. Municipalities began establishing public parks a couple of centuries ago. The primary purpose was to provide passive recreation functions. Parks meant for passive recreation were for the pleasure of citizens in an outdoor, nature-dominated or garden setting. It was not until well into the twentieth century—primarily in post-World War II America—that specialized facilities for active sports, including team sports, were introduced into municipal parks. Children’s play areas filled with swings, merry-go-rounds and other equipment were built at a pace barely keeping up with the families fleeing to live in the suburbs and planned communities associated with urban flight. The evolution as to what one might expect to find in a municipal park has followed the desire trends and the interests of the citizens served. Specialized parks such as skateboard and extreme sports parks have gained in popularity recently. Parks departments have reached out to provide educational opportunities in partnership with broader initiatives of other agencies charged with restoring wetlands, river greenways, and other once degraded and dysfunctional land resources.

The following examples represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what parks are and how they function and serve the public. This is not an exhaustive review but should serve as a window view for those interested in a career designing parks.

Bryant Park in New York City is an example of a park that has had several different lives. It has been a part of the city’s history, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century when the nearly 10-acre parcel was set aside as public use space. The park underwent numerous transformations, perhaps the most successful being its current condition. During the 1970s, the park was taken over by drug dealers, the homeless, and elements that made ordinary citizens feel uncomfortable and unsafe, and they tended to avoid it. In 1988, a team was selected to redesign the park using the opportunity for constructing underground parking and storage for the public library. The primary design goal was to open up the park to the streets and encourage diverse passive activities, including programmed events, such as concerts or evening showings of films. The photograph in Figure 6.14A is of the large central lawn area on a sunny day. The photograph in Figure 6.14B was taken hours later as a crowd of people filled the lawn prior to a planned late afternoon concert. A species of turf grass was selected with a specially designed soil mix and underground drainage system to survive the anticipated intense traffic of people. To achieve a feeling that this was a safe park to enter, the

Figure 6.14 Main lawn area (before and after concert on the lawn performance) at Bryant Park, New York City, by Hanna/Olin.

Figure 6.15 Houtan River Park in Shanghai, China, by Turenscape.

arrangement of plantings and outdoor seating considered creating unobstructed sight lines from the surrounding sidewalk and street into the park.

The paucity of useable or accessible open space for park purposes has led to authorities including park activity programming of river and wetland restoration efforts in urban areas. The examples in Figure 6.15 demonstrate how river and wetland restoration can successfully incorporate passive and educational functions. The site was a derelict and despoiled section of river passing through a neglected and underutilized industrial section of Shanghai, China. The restoration of the river, together with the planning and design of several outdoor education venues, provided the infrastructure to meet the heavy demand for an outdoor, green experience of city residents, especially families and school-aged children.

Amphitheaters such as those shown in Figure 6.16 are most always one of many facilities in a more extensive park, campus, or open space. The two in Figure 6.16 are very different and show the

range of design possibilities and settings that can be created to serve outdoor performance or educational activities. The small amphitheater in Figure 6.16A is located on a historical property in the small border city of Hidalgo in the Lower Rio Grande River Valley of Texas. The facility is used primarily to present public education events. The much larger amphitheater located in a San Francisco city park is capable of handling large numbers of people for musical concerts and dramatic arts programs (Figure 6.16B). The design provides a variety of seating arrangements including stadium seating (stepped rows) of broad grassy terraces to accommodate picnics and groups wishing to socialize.

Children’s play areas can be found in public parks such as in Figure 6.17 and K-6 school grounds. In schools, children’s playgrounds generally serve an exercise function, a component of physical education. Playgrounds in public parks are provided as an outdoor recreation facility (Figure 6.18). They are constructed to serve as an amenity to attract families to condominium or apartment complexes as shown in Figure 6.20 on p. 127. Where there is adequate space or when the program demands, children’s play equipment is clustered into age groups. The groupings can be as simple as toddlers, 5–7 or 8 years, and ages of 8–10. In America, where a litigious environment exists, great care and research are involved in the design of the play structures and the surface in which the structures are placed. Consideration of accessibility is also an important design criterion. With the litigious nature of American society, landscape architects rarely design the play equipment. Rather, they select equipment from catalogues from play equipment manufacturers thus shifting design liability claims to the manufacturer in the event of an injury. Fortunately the design of children’s play equipment has become so competitive that the manufacturers are continually offering new products with greater variety with add-on items. In the example in Figure 6.17, the landscape architect selected the equipment from the play equipment catalogue, thus shifting his creative attention to the design of the surface and spatial environment that contain the play structures. This has become a common approach that limits the professional liability of the designer, allowing the creation of often highly inventive play spaces that receive heavy use.

Sport parks such as for team soccer and baseball can be found in the smallest community as well as large urban ones. Multiplexes of baseball

Figure 6.16 A: Amphitheater, Hidalgo, Texas; B: Stern Grove Amphitheater, San Francisco, California, by Lawrence Halprin.

Figure 6.17 Tongva Park, Santa Monica, California, by James Corner, landscape architect.

Figure 6.18 Children’s playground, Hangzhou, China, by Yuancheng Landscape Group. Figure 6.19 West End Skateboard Park, Albuquerque, New Mexico, by Morrow Reardon Wilkinson, landscape architects.

and soccer fields have been designed to host tournaments, attracting teams both nationally and internationally. The list of specialized park venues can be expected to expand as other sports become popular (Frisbee golf, for example) while the need for traditional passive or pleasure parks will continue and perhaps increase in popularity as urban growth and density increase. One example of a specialized park is the skateboard park shown in Figure 6.19. Designers have established consulting specializations for skateboard and water parks, extreme sports, dirt bike motocross, and competitive sports training complexes such as for Olympic kayaking. Landscape architects teaming with various engineering specialties have established practices of international scope for designing ski venues and zoos. The technology and construction detailing involved have come to support the establishment of specialized, niche consulting practices.

The parks shown in Figures 6.20 and 6.21 were designed to accommodate a great variety of functions for individual users, small and large groups, for hosting team sport events, and for specialized purposes. Grand Park in Los Angeles is situated in a government complex to serve daytime employees during the week. It is then transformed into a family-oriented or performance venue on weekends (Figure 6.20). The two parks in Figure 6.21 are large city parks, each with a unique aesthetic character with a design informed by historical or cultural precedence. The park in Madrid (Figure 6.21A) is organized with reference to the agricultural traditions of the location. The Parc Bercy in Paris2 (Figure 6.21B) was constructed on what was historically a wine warehouse and distribution center with railroad and river barge transportation elements. Some of the historical artifacts were repurposed for passive recreation uses, such as the remnant canal in Figure 6.21B. The park in Santa Fe, New Mexico (see Figure 5.14B on p. 97) is aptly named Railroad Park and was a leftover portion of rail switching yards that were abandoned many years ago. Much of the layout and design used and adapted railroad elements in creating a railroad theme.