Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities

Peter Harnik

Island Press, Jul 16, 2012 - Architecture - 208 pages

For years American urban parks fell into decay due to disinvestment, but as cities began to rebound—and evidence of the economic, cultural, and health benefits of parks grew— investment in urban parks swelled. The U.S. Conference of Mayors recently cited meeting the growing demand for parks and open space as one of the biggest challenges for urban leaders today. It is now widely agreed that the U.S. needs an ambitious and creative plan to increase urban parklands.

Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for “built out” cities to add much-needed parks. Peter Harnik first explores the question of why urban parkland is needed and then looks at ways to determine how much is possible and where park investment should go. When presenting the ideas and examples for parkland, he also recommends political practices that help create parks.

The book offers many practical solutions, from reusing the land under defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from building trails on abandoned tracks to planting community gardens, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. No strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of realities. But collectively they suggest a path toward making modern cities more beautiful, more sociable, more fun, more ecologically sound, and more successful.

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User Review  - paulsignorelli - LibraryThing

Peter Harnik's "Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities" is an engagingly concise exploration of innovative approaches to developing urban public spaces. He does a magnificent job, in 160 ...

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Of Cities and Parks: 11
• Tables: 15
• Finding Park Space in the City: 61
• Conclusion: 159
• Recommended Reading: 161
• Population Density Largest Cities: 165
• Acres of Parkland per 1000 Persons Largest Cities: 168
• Parkland as a Percent of City Area Largest Cities: 171
• Spending per Resident on Parks and Recreation Largest Cities: 174
• Index: 177

About the author

Peter Harnik is director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land and author of Inside City Parks, a book about the park and recreation systems of the 25 largest U.S. cities. In 2003, his research resulted in The Excellent City Park System: What Makes it Great and How to Get There. Previous to that, he was co-founder of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities
• Author: Peter Harnik
• Contributor: Mayor Michael Bloomberg
• Publisher: Island Press, 2012
• ISBN: 1597268127, 9781597268127
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Architecture / General; Architecture / Urban & Land Use Planning