Urban Parks & Planning

Four distinct constellations of program and form have emerged since the beginning of the American park movement in the middle of the nineteenth century: the pleasure garden, reform park, recreational facility, and open-space system. Designers of each model have manipulated similar elements-water, trees, flowers, circulation paths, borders, sculpture, and architecture-but in varying combinations and with different emphasis in order to advance specific social goals.

Resources related to Urban Forestry and  "optimizing the role of trees and forests in and around cities to alleviate poverty."

Research on the politics of public space continues to document privatization trends with only scattered reference to how citizens organize to resist these changes.  Recent trends in urban public space activism (e.g. community gardens, urban forestry, pedestrian and bicycle movements) give cause to revisit the nature and composition of the urban park movement as a mode of resistance to the privatization of public space.  Specifically, what factors influence alliance networks (e.g.

This bibliography, compiled by Misty Sanford, lists resources on urban park planning.

This paper examines the presence of natural landscapes within cities. These landscapes will be addressed through two themes: urban waterfronts and urban parks. Waterfronts and parks play many key roles in the workings of a city. These roles show the importance of natural landscapes in maintaining urban vitality. Roots of the current problems facing cities are first examined. The roles of specific urban waterfronts and parks are then reviewed with respect to some general research.

This policy brief by the Urban Institute reviews the traditional value of parks and explains how parks are claiming new attention as contributors to larger urban policy objectives, such as job opportunities, youth development, public health, and community building.

Peter Harnik, a Washington D.C.-based environmental writer and organizer, has spent the last year researching the current state of parks and recreation systems in 25 large cities around the U.S. for the Trust for Public Land. His research focuses not only on statistics such as size and spending, but innovative programs and initiatives: ways in which cities are creating and revitalizing their parks, aspects that make particular park systems successful, and plans that are underway for parks in the future.