Park and Recreation Matters
It is said that people in the United States have celebrated Park and Recreation Month since 1985.
When did the park become so essential in our urban life? We were curious. Before London’s parks were first developed in the 18th century, the English landscape gardens were always seen as a private luxury. Their designs contained countless allusions tied to Greece and Rome’s symbols. Walking or riding through the picturesque landscape was considered a balanced mental activity: neither too exhausting like farming nor too dull with predictable views. Such landscape arrangement activated human curiosity, prefiguring theories later in modern psychology.
After the major cholera epidemic in England in 1832, the selected committee realized the need for recreational space. It thus urged every town to establish public parks to improve health conditions.
In 1841, Liverpool’s Birkenhead Park was funded by public money to serve the overcrowded industrial workforce. London’s Victoria Park, built in later years, did an even larger working-class population in the capital’s East End.
The New York Central Park, influenced by Paxton’s idea in Birkenhead, was built in 1858. Fedrick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park with the belief that pastoral scenery provided an antidote for urban dwellers.
Parks are “affording the most agreeable contest to the confinement bustle and monotonous street division of the city.” Fedrick Olmsted once said.
In the 1980s, researchers began providing scientific evidence that backed up Olmsted’s pastoral scenery theory. Studies by many scholars such as Kaplan and Kaplan (1989), Appleton (1975), Wiston (1984), Bourassa (1991), and Ulrich (1999) in later days all suggested that the biological basis for human preference for a particular natural environment brings us psychological benefits.
While reading about urban parks’ fascinating history, it reminded us of a WELL feature.
“At a community scale, active design considers the ways in which communities can encourage populations to be active through public infrastructure, such as cycle lanes and green space. “
— WELL V01, Active Buildings and Communities.
According to NRPA (National Recreation and Park Association), the theme of year 2024 is “where you belong.” Many cities aim to bring essential services to the parks and have activities to celebrate this month. Thanks to those park pioneers who advocate making room for the lush vegetation, we can constantly be recharged in the green pasture.
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If you are interested in learning more details on the recurring linkage between landscape and health, consider checking out a review“ Linking Landscape and Health: the recurring theme” by Catherine Ward Thompson.
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If you like this topic, you might also like
- “Being an Agritourist at Inverness Brewery”
- “Why Do We Need Tree Canopies in Our Neighborhoods”
- an YouTube video “Does Your City Have Enough Park” by City Beautiful.
