EVOLUTION OF PARKS

BY HASSAN JASEEM KM, SEM-I M.ARCH RECREATIONAL ARCHITECTURE, JMI

Concepts & Paradigms

Assignment: How the Parks have evolved over time and what are the current scenario
& its impacts. Explain the current scenario with a Comparative study of Central Park,
New York & any example of other park from your surroundings.

Parks in ancient history

A Park is an area of natural, semi-natural, or planted space set aside for human
enjoyment and recreation or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may
consist of grassy areas, rocks, soil, and trees, but may also contain buildings and other
artefacts such as monuments, fountains or playground structures.

Earliest known parks were as early as Mesopotamian era, i.e., 1000BCs. These were
majorly private properties of royal families or monarchs. They were royal hunting parks
where the members of family would go for hunting during leisure.

Public gardens were first introduced by Greeks, as meeting and market places. Parks
were made for domestic pleasure, for exercise, for hunting, for the fine arts and for
celebration of the emperor's godlike status. These parks remained in imperial villas.

Medieval parks

During Medieval period, there were lands called as ‘Common lands’, which were more
like privately owned pieces of land but with limited accessibility for the members of the
public for activities like fishing etc.

During Renaissance period, classical gardens and parks were looked at for exemplary
models for the villa gardens and parks. This was firstly in Italy and later throughout
Europe from fifteenth to eighteenth century. North European parks and gardens
designers paid their respects to this ancestry when they included Greek and Roman
statuary in their designs.

First in seventeenth century France and later in eighteenth century England, the rulers'
parks burst from their impartments. Louis XIV projected the avenues of Versailles ever
outwards, and opened the park to his subjects.

Some early parks include the La Alameda de Hércules, in Seville, a promenaded public
mall, urban garden and park built in 1574, within the historic centre of Seville. The City
Park in the City of Pest, what is today Budapest, Hungary, was a city property when
afforestation started in the middle of the 18th century, from the 1790s with the clear
aim to create a public park.

Many of England's royal and aristocratic parks were opened to the public. In the
nineteenth century, special new spaces, known as "public parks', were provided for the
poor. To begin with, these parks were bounded: locked at night and strictly controlled.

The parks built in the 18th century were mainly pleasure gardens. They were modelled
to imitate nature. These were not supposed to contrast nature but to enhance the image
of nature. Elite people would go there to watch and enjoy the beauty along with their
families.

Modern public parks

An early purpose-built public park, although financed privately, was Princes Park in the
Liverpool suburb of Toxteth. This was laid out to the designs of Joseph Paxton from
1842 and opened in 1843.

At the end of the 18 century and the beginning of the 19 century a shift in emphasis
from aesthetics to functionalism occurred as people have a tendency to use parks to
accomplish their needs, rather than as something to observe.

This was period of industrial revolution and frequent migration and population
densification as a result of it. Cities were getting crowded near industries. Streets and
allies were getting packed with diseases due to lack of proper living and sanitation
facilities. This was when town planning departments decided to make the cities more
liveable by incorporating ‘rural imagery’ to the cityscape.

It was during 1850s, the New York City authorities were planning for central park in the
middle of the city, as a means of escape for the residents from the busy city life. It was
constructed by 1866 in the design of Frederick Law Olmstead, known as the father of
American landscape architecture.

The development of urban parks has been part of the process of urbanization of
European and American cities. Before the 1850s there were only a few of Royal Parks
and some older meeting greens in London. Urban parks were created in industrial cities
throughout Britain. Concepts like ‘garden city’ by Ebenezer Howard were becoming
popular.

In the early 20th century, it was recognized that although cities were confused, their
survival was necessary and the solution to this confusion could be found by improving
them. The park that would bring the needed order was a mixture of two activities: small
park support which wanted to bring parks to the areas in which working class people
lived and the play area movement which wanted a substitute to the street for children's
play. These newly formed parks were called Reform parks.
Their function was not mainly walking and strolling. They were to make provision for
all sorts of games. They were to be available to all people however of social class. They
were to pay off for the land lost to industry and housing and they were especially
planned for the working class as a relief from the pressures of their lives.

During 1930s, there was rapid growth in population and increase in standard of living
and need for more leisure related activities. This led to the need for facilities for sports
and related activities. In New York City, for instance, during a period of twenty years
from the mid-1930s the number of recreation facilities increased more than five
times. During these times, England also managed to setup many entirely sporty open
spaces.

Throughout the second half of the 20 century the approach to urban planning and
design differed among the countries of Europe, which in turn exaggerated the creation
of urban parks. Between 1976 and 1992, the concern for setting up green space has led
to an increase of 55% in public park area.

Today, provisions for parks and open spaces constitute major portions in the land
development policies of developing countries. There are regulations and guidelines to
promote these open spaces as a means to enhance the lives of people.

C ENTRAL P ARK , N EW Y ORK

Central Park is an urban park in the middle of the city of Manhattan, New York. Central
Park is the fifth-largest park in New York City by area, covering 843 acres. In 1853 it
was approved to construct the park. It was in 1857, Frederick Law Olmstead and
Calvert Vaux won a design competition to construct the park with a plan they titled
“Greensward Plan”.

Between 1821 and 1855, New York City nearly quadrupled in population. As the city
expanded northward up Manhattan Island, people were drawn to the few existing open
spaces, mainly cemeteries, for passive recreation. These were seen as escapes from the
noise and chaotic life in the city, which at the time was composed mostly of Lower
Manhattan. By the 1840s, members of the city's elite were publicly calling for the
construction of a new large park in Manhattan.

The site allotted for central park was initially 750acres (300ha) bounded by 59th and
106th Streets between Fifth and Eighth Avenues. Land and property assessments were
underway since 1855. Over 34000 lots were assessed. At the time, the site was occupied
by free black people and Irish immigrants who had developed a property-owning
community there since 1825. Most of the Central Park site's residents lived in small
villages, such as Pigtown, Seneca Village etc.

Clearing began shortly after the Central Park land commission's report was released in
October 1855 and approximately 1,600 residents were evicted under eminent domain.
Though park supporters claimed that Central Park would only cost $1.7 million, the
total cost of the land ended up being $7.39 million.

Features:

Olmsted and Vaux named their plan “Greensward” after their preferred landscape type
of sweeping meadows designed to appear limitless to park visitors. These grand
pastoral scenes were complemented by serene water bodies and carefully juxtaposed
with the intimacy of picturesque woodlands featuring dense plantings, meandering
streams, and dramatic rockwork arranged to include naturalistic caves, grottos and
cascades. Moving though these orchestrated views would be the antidote to the
congestion and unforgiving pace of work and the crowded conditions in which much of
the soaring population of New York lived.

Grand elm-lined promenade and Bethesda terrace with the Angel of waters fountain
were designed as spaces for civic socialisation.

Visitors experience these varied park scenes through a brilliant system of intertwined
recreational roads: 45km of pedestrian paths, 10 km of undulating drives to be shared
by both equestrians and carriages, and a rural bridle trail exclusively for horseback
riding.

The park’s 10 km tree-lined perimeter offers an urban promenade that acts as a visual
barrier between the city and the park. To ensure the safety and psychological peace of
mind for all park visitors, a series of ornamental bridges were created that separated
walkways for quiet strolling from the faster horse and carriage traffic.

The design competition required the inclusion of transverse roads to cross the Park at
intervals and be open to city traffic both day and night. The creation of four below-
grade roadways—65th Street, 79th Street, 86th Street and 96th Street—are Olmsted
and Vaux’s most innovative feature. These external arteries, artfully camouflaged
behind dense vegetation, ensure visitors the continuity of a purely rural experience
within the boundaries of the park.

The Park was also designed as a vital cultural resource, offering flexible spaces for
music and the visual arts, passive recreation such as sketching and birding and active
sports such as boating, ice-skating, baseball, tennis and croquet, and an outdoor
classroom for the appreciation and study of botany.