Defining the Sustainable Park: A Fifth Model for Urban Parks

Galf n Cranz has a Masters and PhD in sociolog)' from University" of Chicago, where she specialized in the "social use of space." Since then she has taught architecture from a social and cultural point of view at Princeton University and the University' of California at Berkeley. The author of The Politics ofPniii Design (1982), she hecame interested in the problems of sustainable development in 1991 as a reviewer for the Riverside South Planning Development Cknp. in Manhattan. Other research interests include bodyconsciotis design and the sociology of taste in interior design. Michael Boland, both a practicing professional and an academic, seeks to integrate human and ecological systems in public open space. Currently a doctoral stndent in Environmental Planning at the University of (.alifornia at Berkeley, he has Masters degrees in Landscape Architecture and in City and Regional Planning, and an AB in Aichitecture. Abstract: How ran parks tontiilmie to (he overarching project of helping cities become more ecologically sustaitiahl^f The history of urban parks in America rei'eals more concern xvilh social problems than with ecological sustainability. Four types of city parks have been identified—the Pleasure Ground, the Reform Park, the Recreation Facility, and the C)j)en Space System—and each of them respond to social issues, not ecological ones. Yet today, ecological problems are becoming one of our biggest social concerns, so a. neiv urban park type focused on social solutions to ecological problems ivmtld be consistent with this pattein. Using the same social and physical criteria that described the prexiious four models. Part I desnibes a fifth model, the Sustainable Park, which began to emerge in the late 1990s. Part I! postulates three gene)al attributes of this new kind of park: (1) selfsufftciency in regard to matnial resources and maintenance, (2) solving larger urban problems outside of park boundaries, and (3) neating new standards for aesthetics and landscape management in parks and other urban landscapes, ft also explores poiuy impUcaticms of these attributes regarding park design and management, the practice of landscape architecture, citizen participation, and ecological education.