Reinterpreting Frederick Law Olmsted's Idea of Urban Parks

Urban park are indispensable elements of contemporary cities. However, the structure and culture of contemporary cities is currently changing. There are prevalent discourses that Olmstedian parte are no longer relevant to our new societies and cultures. New kinds of parks have emerged with different forms and functions. In order to propose a new paradigm for parks in the 21st century, we need to look back to the origin of modem parks, which is to say, Olmstedian parte. This paper aims to trace the background of park movements in the 19th century America and to identify and describe Olmsted's idea of urban parks. In addition, the paper will clarify the limitations and reinterpret the meaning of Olmsted's idea of urban parks. One idea behind the development of urban parte was to mitigate urban problems such as public health, alcoholism violence and class conflicts in 19th century industrial cities. The aim of urban park was partially achieved at that time. However, those parse did not serve the use of diverse classes. Olmstedian parks were designed for passive and civilized recreation, and lower classes were more attracted by active theme parks and areas such as Coney Island and John Wood. The strengths of Olmsted's idea of urban parte can be outlined as follows: First, designing parte goes beyond shaping physical lands to embrace social reforms. This means that park designers should have a critical understanding of society and culture. Also, landscape designers should have a bold vision for the future. Without such a vision and social agenda, landscape architects cannot postulate alternative possibilities through engaging in new practices. Second, Olmsted successfully adapted British landscape aesthetic ideas such as the picturesque, the sublime and the beautiful into an American context. Finally, his vision and idea of urban parks show us that landscape architecture is not just technical work, but that it can create a locus to engage a new cultural praxis by inventing cultural products - parks.

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