Parks began as aristocratic hunting walls, not playgrounds
A park can be planted city green, countryside recreation, or a vast wildlife reserve spanning hundreds of thousands of square kilometres. Medieval English deer parks, though, were walled or hedged preserves that kept stags in and commoners out. Only later did landscape fashion and industrial cities reinvent the word for public relief.
The biggest parks are wild tracts covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometres, with mountains, rivers and abundant wildlife. Many are legally protected, so visitors may need permits to camp and must obey rules such as bans on open fires or glass bottles, while rangers oversee the larger national and regional reserves. Depending on season and latitude they host canoeing and hiking or cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. At the other extreme sit amusement parks with rides, shows and games.
Medieval English deer parks were enclosed preserves where commoners were forbidden to hunt. From the sixteenth century such grounds softened into landscaped estates around country houses, reshaped by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton into idealised natural views, while French formal gardens offered a rival geometry. Urban parks also descend from common pasture; Boston Common, reserved in 1634, is the celebrated American case.
Industrial cities needed substitutes for countryside, so parks became places for sport and fresh air. Design follows purpose: walking paths and planting for strolling, playgrounds for children, riding trails for horses, and benches, including British Happy to Chat seats that invite strangers to say hello. In Vienna, redesigns of two parks suggested multiple semi-enclosed play areas could encourage more equal use by girls and boys.
Perceived safety matters more than crime statistics in deciding whether people use a park at all. Research suggests that people who exercise outdoors among greenery gain more for their mental health. Saltdean Oval in East Sussex was reworked to help pollinators, a cause the Xerces Society promotes, and the American Society of Landscape Architects argues that projects such as Chicago’s Millennium Park strengthen whole neighbourhoods and cities.
Source: Park
