What Makes A Good Urban Park

Blog post by Peter Katz on 21 Oct 2011

Peter Katz, New Urban Network

Editor's note: This article first appeared in Land and People, the magazine for the Trust for Public Land, in 1995 — yet it offers guidance that is useful and lays out issues that are current today. Public spaces have been much discussed on New Urban Network of late, especially with Occupy Wall Street and related protests in downtown parks across the US

City parks have been endangered by suburban flight, privatization and design overkill. Here’s a short list of basics for planning true public spaces.

"Everyone has a favorite park, or should. Mine is Washington Square, in the heart of San Francisco, bordering Chinatown and the laid back book stores and coffee houses of North Beach. First platted around 1850, the park is mostly open with a simple looping walkway. The subtle ripples and rolls of its naturalistic topography give me a sense of how the city’s hills and valleys must have once looked. In and around the park, neighborhood life flourishes. Regulars claim its sunny benches to read and chat. Elderly residents practice Tai-Chi. School children play frisbee. Commuters disembark from buses along the park’s edge on Columbus Avenue. Lunchtime picnics are daily events on the sprawling green lawn.

Unfortunately most small urban parks, particularly those in downtowns, fail to deliver the sort of civic experience that can be enjoyed in Washington Square every day. Such parks are the victims of strapped city budgets, the latest theories of crime prevention and the nervous tinkerings of overzealous designers. Ultimately, these assaults can be traced back to a larger cause–the disinvestment in cities which occurred as a result of America's postwar flight to the suburbs."

Click here to read the complete article.