The Right to Urban Parks

The version of spring 2008 of the research proposal for my doctoral thesis 

Chapter 1:

The Right to Urban Parks

What is a park? What is an urban park? What is its function, definition and for what it is being used? Why urban parks? For which purposes have they been created, by whom and for whom? In order to understand the function of urban parks and the relationship between nature and urbanity, work of the founder of the landscape architecture and park planner, Frederick Law Olmsted is studied.

I will study definitions of various forms of parks in the urban context and the history of parks. As there hardly is a one all-embracing definition of their onthology and function, the existence, definition and parks has been a cause for struggle.

Who “owns” the parks? Are they a public good or a luxury? Who use them, for what, when and with whom? Where do the park users live? Are the parks there to be admired, aesthetic objects or do they serve functions for the city?

My central focus will be on the Helsinki Central park as it transgresses the two extreme definitions of urban parks – artificial, deliberately created neighbourhood or “pocket” parks inside the habitation and natural leftovers of rurality between or outside the habited areas. The definitions of parks are in fact different manifestations of the relationship between nature and urbanity. This problematic history will be quite thoroughly studied.

As I am studying different definitions of parks, their use, function and very definition, the question of park politics and power struggles is central in order to understand the essence of parks as urban “goods”. Threaths to the park - past and present are studied. What has come of the past threaths, have the plans been realised? Who has been the initiator in these threats?

An extensive section of history of and conflicts at the Oslo city forest, Oslomarka is included here as it is paradigmatic case of the relationship between nature and city.