The Politics of Park Design:
A History of Urban Parks in America

By Galen Cranz, MIT Press Reviewed by Lynn Atwood

What do we really want from city parks — and what are we willing to pay to get it?

Should parks remain free to all, or should they charge nominal admission?

To keep maintenance costs down while keeping esthetic quality high, should "natural" parks be more natural and inner-city parks more sculptural and less destructible?

And in the 1980s, isn't it appropriate to locate small garden plots, day-care centers and health-club-style fitness centers in urban parks?

These are a few of the questions posed in a provocative new book by Galen Cranz, associate professor of architecture at the University of California in Berkeley.

Cranz, who describes herself as a specialist on the social use of space and a sociologist of leisure time, has authored "The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America "(MIT Press).

The first half of Cranz's book traces changes in the physical and organizational features of American parks since 1850.

In the second, more analytical half, Cranz shows which social groups promoted parks for whose benefit — in theory and practice. She concludes that park policies for each era expressed dominant societal values.

She also presents her "visions" of what late 20th century parks could be and do — tempered with the caveat that parks are creatures of people and society and that their uses will inevitably continue to shift as new values emerge.

According to Cranz, the "pleasure ground" era from roughly 1850 to 1900 sought to set aside large tracts of land, landscaped naturalistically with meandering roadways, pleasant meadows and occasionally thick foliage, to provide tranquil respite from the grime and bustle of the city. San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and New York's Central Park are prime examples of this type.

With waves of immigration to the U.S. and the ascendancy of Progressivism, the "reform park" evolved and reached its zenith between 1900 and 1935. Instead of landscape architects, the most influential figures in parks were now organizers and recreation leaders. The park was no longer a retreat from the city, but a neighborhood meeting place where athletic teams, crafts groups and clubs could socialize — and thus foster good citizenship.

Paved game areas, children's playgrounds, busy fieldhouses, swim pools, small vegetable gardens and wire mesh fencing became common in reform parks, and smaller-sized parks grew more acceptable.

"The industrial top-down style of leisure-time organization did have some virtue, namely the careful programming of local playgrounds by social workers," Cranz noted. But with the Depression, these people-intensive benefits were lost because trained leadership was now too expensive for lean times.

What Cranz calls "the recreation facility" dominated the period 1930 to 1965. City parks were no longer perceived as special, but were taken for granted and run by well-entrenched civil servants. The latter, Cranz suggests, were often more interested in expanding their empires than in inspiring the public or listening to its needs.

As "urban safety valves," in Cranz's words, the parks shone in these troubled decades. The San Francisco Recreation Commission noted its duty to "confront the problem of increased leisure time due to the Depression," and Chicago parks fought "idleness."

Park funding would never again be as generous or idealism as high as in the reform era, especially after World War II. And the image of parks was changing too, away from molding character and toward providing entertainment. "Storylands," theme playgrounds and free-form sculptural play equipment were the contributions of this era.

The current "open-space system" era dating from the mid-1960s treats parks as needed breathing space that is not foreign to, but harmonious and continuous with the urban landscape. Parks came to be viewed as an amenity to counter white flight to the suburbs and to cool "long hot summers."

Thus "happenings," rock music, kite festivals and Krishna parades were welcomed in parks' attempts to try the new. "If the pleasure ground had been a pious patriarch, the reform park a social worker, and the recreation facility a waitress or car mechanic, the new park was something of a performance artist," Cranz writes.

Direct grassroots participation in park programming, a new-found respect for historical landmarks and a stress on park adaptability all are hallmarks of this era. Park uses can be squeezed out of tiny "vest pockets" of land such as Manhattan's Paley Park, little more than a small but esthetically pleasing plaza.

With park funding now so austere compared to the "reform park" period, park costs and financing are an enormous challenge, Cranz says.

She recommends "rethinking" maintenance expense by using materials native to the site: in Chicago, prairie grasses; in California, native oaks; in New York, "weed trees" (ailanthus); in all three cities, natural meadows "mowed" by sheep or deer rather than lawn grass. Inner-city parks vulnerable to vandalism can be made beautiful and rugged at the same time by a "more sculptural attitude" in designing the environment, she says.

Small user fees also make sense. Even China's collectivist system charges a fee for municipal parks, according to Cranz.

More radical still would be a system of vouchers, where every citizen would receive tickets to use for recreation anywhere. not just in public parks. This would encourage competition among existing public parks and the private sector, resulting in a larger menu of possible activities.

Could private business crowd out traditional public parks? Cranz says it's possible but unlikely because Americans see "a link between public space and democracy."

For park programming in 1983 and beyond, Cranz suggests community garden plots because whenever they have been tried (in the reform era and during wars) "the demand always exceeds supply."

She also recommends siting children's day care in parks. "It's a pressing need of this era, and parks are suited to it with space and often with buildings. All we need is the attitude that child care is a collective responsibility," Cranz notes.

And for increasingly health-conscious adults, she recommends fitness centers modeled after private health clubs, with hot tubs and saunas.

"Those with an interest in the character of urban life should seize on parks as one of the vehicles for the realization of their particular visions, and debate about parks should revolve around those visions," Cranz concludes.

Illinois Parks and Recreation 45 January/February