The Politics of Park Design. Galen Cranz

The Politics of Park Design. Galen Cranz. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1981.Across the last 150 years parks have become a requisite feature of the urban landscape. Most universities offer coursework in park design and management, national organizations and lobbying efforts are engineered to increase parks' stature, and hundreds of thousands of employees tend these parks nationwide. Although parks existence is now largely taken for granted, Galen Cranz's The Politics of Park Design is the only book that has addressed the rationale and evolution of parks in American cities.Tasked with designing neighborhood playgrounds in Chicago, Galen Cranz wanted her designs to reflect the purpose and goals of parks. Cranz investigated what people and professionals felt were the purposes of parks and open space. The result of her social historical analysis is The Politics of Park Design. This classic text was written almost 30 years ago and remains the only comprehensive account of urban park development in the United States. The text is written as a narrative but is bolstered by extensive use of historical quotes, more than 90 photographic records of parks, and 82 pages of notes and references.The Politics of Park Design is presented in two parts. The first half of the book describes the design and use of public parks in four eras. The second portion delves into the politics that set in motion each successive park movement. Taken together, readers understand the evolution of American parks and what this evolution reveals about the social problems and location of political power in American cities.The first chapter places readers in the clogged, dirty streets of New York City in the 1850s. City dwellers' concerns for a loss of landscape and air quality together with their idealized view of country living provided the social conditions for the development of America's first parks. These parks, called Pleasure Grounds (1850-1900), were conceived as antidotes to urban life that would stimulate workers' minds with meadows and sunshine right in the city. Parks such as Central Park in New York City, Jackson Park in Chicago, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco were developed during this era. Curved paths, natural landscaping and park boulevards encouraged walks and promenading. However, the sheer size of these venues meant that pleasure grounds were often located on the edges of cities and beyond the reach of workers who lacked the time and transportation resources to access these pristine venues.Cranz identified an observed increase in workers' free time as an impetus for the second era of park design. This era, The Reform Park era (1900-1930), sought to fill working class families' free time with purposeful recreation at smaller, inner city sites. The movement was spearheaded by social workers and grassroots play leaders who organized activities and games to teach ethics and citizenship. The Reform Park era coincided with the playground movement and channeled at risk youth out of streets and into neighborhood parks. These parks were designed for utility, not beauty, and offered swimming pools, playgrounds, sport courts and field houses.In the third chapter Cranz describes a shift away from idealistic rationale for parks to a systems model of provision in the Recreation Facility era (1930-1965). This era was characterized by the integration of parks with community services such as day care, schools, and the local housing authority. While this systems approach led to citywide and parks master planning, Cranz noted that a shift to bureaucracy resulted in fewer services focused on the park user and his/her welfare but instead, ...the park department took on a life of its own and came to be committed first of all to its own maintenance and enhancement (p. 109). The author cites unemployment following the Great Depression, patriotism for foreign wars, and later, the development and growth of suburbs as factors that drove demand for development. …