Article: public parks and enlargement of towns: American social science association (1870)

By: Frederick Law Olmsted

See also the new your park from David Harvey

The park movement which started with the design of the New York central park in 1860s and
gained momentum through the years flourished in the US throughout the 19 th century merging
with the city beautiful movement around the end of the century following the success of the
1893 Chicago world’s Columbian exhibition. The city beautiful movement advocated improving
the public realm of cities through street lighting, fountains, benches, ornamental planting, shade
trees, public art.
What are the urban design issues in relation to this movement?
 A solution to urban problem: the attitude of indifference, suspicion and sometimes
hostility towards our own urban citizens in any encounter is due to mainly the hostile
environment the city is creating: noise, pollution, crime, poverty, etc. Streets are one
such environment. By not allowing people to socialize, such spaces actually contribute to
the aggravation of this evil. The whole idea of the city park is the need to create such a
public space that would not only create a common platform for all to share but in an
environment which is free from the evils of the city.
 Trees as a permanent furniture of the city along streets with their own right of way and
space provided for their growth and expansion.
 The scale: this is where discussion is at the level of the macro scale since the movement
is a city and a city-region level
 Like the Haussmann’s boulevard, large urban parks as the new public spaces to bring
people from all over the city in search of fresh air and relaxation
 Design: Picturesquely designed parks to create calm, pleasing environment for
contemplation and relaxation
 The idea was the creation of connected park system in cities as a means of structuring
urban growth that cities were experiencing during the time due to economic growth and
ensuring the distribution of park amenities. This s about city planning using parks as
structuring elements
 The park as a system: The use of broad tree lined parkways to connect urban parks.
The author proposes the connection of the parks among themselves and the different
parts of the city through two route systems. One is through narrow informal elongations
of the park, varying say from two to five hundred feet in width and radiating irregularly
 from it or if the town is already laid out in grid or any other patter, such connection could
be through formal parkways. They should be planned and constructed as never to be
noisy and seldom crowded, and they should be made interesting by a process of
planting and decoration, so that in necessarily passing through them whether in going to
or from the park or to and from business, some substantial recreative advantage may be
gained. They should be branched or accessed by other city streets so that they are
never to far away from the different sections of the city to be easily accessed by people
working or living in those areas. “ if such streets were made still broader in some parts,
and if each of them were given the proper capacity, and laid out with laterals and
connections in suitable directions to serve as a convenient trunk line of communication
between two large districts of the town or the business center and the suburbs, a very
great number of people might thus be placed every day under influences counteracting
those with which we desire to contend”.
 Design: it is a common error to regard a park as something to be produced complete in
itself, as a picture to be painted on canvas. It should rather be planned as one to be
done in fresco, with constant consideration of exterior objects, some of them quite at a
distance and even existing as yet only in the imagination of the painter.
 Parks as an antidote to urban life.
What activities to introduce in the parks?
 Two types of activities can be introduced in city parks those that stimulate exertion of
any sort termed as exertive recreation and those that give us pleasure without conscious
exertion. Games chiefly of mental skill, as chess, or athletic sports, as baseball, are
examples of the first type while music and the fine arts are of the second type. These
last are called receptive recreation types. “In the Bois de Boulogne there is a race-
course; in the bois de Vincennes a ground for artillery target practice. Military parades
are held in Hyde Park. A few cricket clubs are accommodated in most of the London
parks and swimming is permitted in the lakes at certain hours. In the new your park,
none of these activities are provided for or permuted except that the boys of the public
schools are given the use of holidays or certain large spaces for ball playing.
 Regarding receptive recreation, there are again two types: those that require large
crowd/congregation for maximum enjoyment (such as areas for concert) and those that
need small congregation creating circumstances favorable for personal friendliness. The
first are called gregarious and the second neighborly. Which activity is a question of
context and culture. Some cultures require spaces of the second type and others the
 first. Le promenade of Champs-Elysees is an area of the fist type where multitudes of
people are walking over the wide pedestrian streets enjoying what ever is provided in the
area. Think about Jalmeda during Timket and Mesquel square during any mass rally,
religious or none
 In terms of planning, it is recommendable to provide a large number of smaller parks
distributed throughout the city being reached at a walking distance than a few but big
and full of activities parks.
 The land: we want a ground to which people may easily to after their day’s work is done,
and where they may stroll for an our, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle
and jar of the streets, where they shall, in effect, find the city put far away from them.
What we want most is simple, broad open space of clean greensward, with sufficient
play of surface and a sufficient number of trees about it so supply a variety of light and
shade.
By the time this article was written as is the case today in many cities, the provision of land for
public uses mainly a big tract of land like for a park was extremely difficult. Land owners and
developers are devouring the city’s land without any thought for the mass of people and
governments in such places are also inconsiderate. Yet there were some cities in America even
by then where the provision of such public spaces was taken for granted. In such places, a
husband would say to his wife:
“my dear, when the children come home from school, put some bread and butter and salad in
a basket, and go to the spring under the chestnut-tree where we found Mr. x last week. I will
join you there as soon as I can get away from the office. We will walk to the diary man’s
cottage and get some tea and some fresh milk for the children, and take our supper by the
book-side”
Citing his experience, the author wrote: in this recreation of which the dominant element was the
neighborly type, those thousands of people of all sort often bring fiddle, flute, and harp, or other
music. Tables, seats, shade, turf, swings, cool spring water and a pleasing rural prospect,
stretching off half a mile or more each way, unbroken by a carriage road or the slightest
evidence of the vicinity of the town, were supplied them without charge and bread and milk and
ice cream at moderate fixed charges. In all my life I have never seen such joyous collections of
people. I have in fact more than once observed tears of gratitude in the eyes of poor women, as
they watched their children thus enjoying themselves.