When it was officially opened on Easter Monday, 5th April 1847, Birkenhead park became the first municipally funded park in Britain. It was a pioneer in the development of urban public parks, designed for use by everyone, irrespective of social class, ethnicity or age. In terms of town planning, it demonstrated the importance of including green infrastructure in urban development as a vital contribution to public health and wellbeing. Paxton’s design for the park was heralded as ‘a masterpiece of human creative genius’ : it served as a vehicle for the global transmission of the English landscape school and led to the creation of numerous public parks everywhere, most famously Central Park, New York, incorporating of many of Paxton’s design features. This book addresses a long-standing gap in the Park’s historiography. Regarded as ‘one of the greatest wonders of the age’, it is an important contribution to nineteenth-century landscape history with a local focus, but of international significance. But it seeks to interpret the Park’s development until 1914 within a political and cultural context, drawing on economic and social history, as a means of explaining why it was not until the late-nineteenth century that it finally became a focal point for recreation and public health.

Great City Parks is a celebration of some of the finest achievements of landscape architecture in the public realm. It is a comparative study of twenty significant public parks in fourteen major cities across Western Europe and North America. Collectively, they give a clear picture of why parks have been created, how they have been designed, how they are managed, and what plans are being made for them at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Based on unique research including extensive site visits and interviews with the managing organisations, this book is illustrated throughout with clear plans and professional photographs for each park. This book reflects a belief that well-planned, well-designed and well-managed parks remain invaluable components of liveable and hospitable cities.

The large parks and green infrastructure presented here illustrate the diverse uses and many benefits of large urban parks across 30 major cities. Demand for large urban parks emerged at the height of the First Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, when large urban parks represented new ideas of accessible public spaces, often established on land previously owned by aristocracy, royalty or the army. They represented new ideas on how city life could be improved and how large green spaces could enhance urban citizens’ physical and psychological well-being (e.g. Birkenhead Park in Liverpool, Bois de Boulogne in Paris, Tiergarten in Berlin and Central Park in New York City). Today, large urban parks are habitats for biodiversity and spaces of climate change adaptation. For people living in cities, this biodiversity may represent high cultural, recreational and aesthetic values, but is also important for other aspects of health and well-being, for example by reducing the urban heat island effect, air pollution and risks of flooding. At a time when we are seriously reconsidering how we live in cities and our urban quality of life, while also grappling with serious challenges of climate change, the authors of this book detail the much-needed evidence, pathways and vision for a future of more liveable, resilient cities where large urban parks are at the core. This book will help park managers, NGOs, landscape architects and city planners to develop the green city of the future.

Resource added for the Landscape Horticulture Technician program 100014.