Urban parks: some thoughts and meanings

Abstract

The aim of this study is to outline and discuss some of the meanings of Urban Parks. In order to achieve this aim, the study will address the Park in its historical, contemporary, and future contexts. My overriding concern is with the relationship which exists between Urban Parks and the City as a whole. Within the frame work of this study I hope to illustrate that the one cannot exist sufficiently without the other. The discussion of Parks in four "categories": as garden, as playground, as open space, as artefact; is not an attempt to differentiate between park types as such, but rather a vehicle to illustrate their capacity for changes in meaning. The meanings/roles of Urban Parks are not necessarily fixed, but instead tend to reflect/shape the meanings of cities. Their capacity for creating social, psychological, and political order, of planning and controlling land, and of shaping civic form and beauty make them as important at the end of the twentieth century as any other period in their history and development