The Irresistible Appeal of the ‘Post-Industrial Park’

In Parks for Profit, a sociologist argues that glitzy urban parks that rely on private funders can trigger displacement and drain resources from other public spaces.

An on-again, off-again romance smolders between nature and the American city. It’s complicated.

The original matchmaker was 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose picturesque green spaces like New York City’s Central Park offered urbanites an idealized experience of nature. During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration built smaller neighborhood parks for the industrial working classes (though these, of course, were racially segregated and unequal).

But as urban centers deindustrialized and white residents left for the suburbs, local governments often stopped maintaining parks, surrendering them, along with the industrial infrastructure these green spaces offered a reprieve from, to overgrowth and disrepair.

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Bloomberg CityLab

by Michael Friedrich

March 5, 2022



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