The ascent of urban parks

Some ancient observers found that the diversity of the agora – serving same king of functions as public, open urban spaces as the parks - disturbed their sense of political decorum and gravity. In the Politics, Aristotle wrote, "a city is composed of different kinds of men; similar people cannot bring a city into existence." (Sennett 1994, 56.)

From the days of Plantagenet dynasty in the latter part of the 12th century, the public had already been allowed the privilege of walking on the royal hunting parks of London. The first documented case for the promoting of public interest of green areas was an act passed in the English Parliament in 1592, according to which "no person shall inclose or take in any part of the commons or waste grounds within three miles of the gates of the city of London, nor
sever nor divide by any hedges, ditches, pales or otherwise any of the said fields lying within three miles etc., to the hindrance of the training or mustering of soldiers, or of walking for recreaction, comfort and health of her Majesty's people". The formulation was liberal in its time, but it had very little practical effect. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 4-5.)

In 1649 did the English Parliament passed an act to the city of London, presenting the Richmond Great Park, formerly being a possession of King Charles. Next year the parliament passed another resolution of the park, maintaining "that it was the intention of Parliament in passing the Act for settling the new Park at Richmond on the Mayor and Commonalty of the City of London, that the same should be preserved as a park still, without destruction, and to remain as an ornament to the City, and a Mark of Favour from the Parliament unto the said City", being a large open space belonging to the municipality, being opened to the public use by the royal owners to whom the park was soon given back after the restoration. By that time hunting had already become less popular and the common interest of parks' use for common recreation had grown. By the latter part of the 18th century London, this privilege had become practically a public right. (ibid., 5.)

Around the mid-17th century, Paris and London were the two largest metropoles of the world. Alongside with the population growth of the cities, more social networks and more accidental encounters of strangers occurred. The streets had become too narrow and hectic for encounters and places specially reserved for encounters had to be launched, and this need was the greatest in the largest towns, so it again was no coincidence that the first towns to adopt large public city parks were London and Paris at that time. (Sennett 1992, 17.)

By the mid-18th century, Tuileries in Paris and St. James's Park in London had become an integral element of daily town life of the inhabitants of their respective towns, reflecting the wide variety of sociality and representing various social classes gathered in towns. Albeit trying to adopt the forms of sociability of high classes, even the working class was tolerated in the parks. As the encounters at parks were of accidental and mostly casual nature, the parks in fact served an important function in educating the people into the mentality of townspeople.

The Regent's Park was earmarked in 1812 from a royal land by the future king George IV as a non-built resort or a reservoir, meant as the "lungs of the city", in the centre of the lands meant for building. The park was planned by John Nash in conjunction of the Regent's Street, meant to exclude all traffic from the park. (Sennett 1994, 325-328.) In Liverpool, the Prince's Park was laid out by a private enterprise as a land speculation including a possibility to construct "villas for the wealth and promenades for the poor". (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 6.)

England appointed in 1833 a select committee "to consider the best means of securing open spaces in the vicinity of populous towns, as Public Walks and Places of Exercise, calculated to promote the Health and Comfort of the Inhabitants". The Committee pointed out that the great increase in the population in large towns, simultaneously increasing value of property and growing extent of building, many enclosures of open spaces had occurred and in turn, little or no provision for public walks or open spaces for providing means for the greater public had been made. It furthermore maintained that "any provision of public walks and open places would much conduce to the comfort, health and content of the classes (middle and humbler in question). (ibid., 6-7.)

Alongside London, the Committee mentioned Liverpool, Bristol, Norwich, Nottingham and Shrewsbury as the only other English towns to have "some open space in their immediate vicinity yet preserved as a public walk". At Manchester there even was a society for the preservation of public foot paths, and in Liverpool the St. James's Walk formed by the corporation of Liverpool, had been damaged by smoke and become useless for recreation purposes. (ibid., 7.)

In England the continental influences and examples were recognised by the committee, citing that Paris, Lyon and Florence were superior to London when it came to the public walks (ibid., 8.) In France the gardens of Versailles (Hazlehurst 1980, 4) were designed as geometric entities around the Versailles castle by André Le Nostre (1613-1700). Le Nostre was also called onto designing private gardens for the houses of the French nobility. When Versailles, located outside the city, accentuated power, the Place Louis XV as planned by Pierre L'Enfant (1755-1825), was meant to provide the citizens of Paris a free space, the lung of the city (Sennett 1994, 268-269).

In L'Enfant plan of Paris in the mid 18th century, movement through the urban lung was still to be a sociable experience. In 1765, the authorities of Paris sought out various schemes to make Place Louis XV more accessible to the people of the city, a lung through which the Parisians could stream and refresh themselves. These streets and footpaths marked a great break with the older fabric of the city; no commerce would be allowed on them, or rather, only commerce with the air and the leaves, and one another. Curiously, the plan L'Enfant made for Washington is not quite so at ease with nature in the city as was the Place Louis XV. L'Enfant explained to president Washington that he wished to "afford a great variety of pleasant seats and prospects" and to "connect each part of the city". Open spaces freely available to all citizens would serve both these ends. (ibid. 268-270)

The Place Louis XV contravened the power relations which shaped open space in a royal garden outside the city. Another kind of open space appeared in the influential English landscaping of the early 18th century, "the boundless garden", lacking an obvious beginning or end, seizing the imagination in irregular space full of surprises as the eye wandered or the
body moved, a place of lush and free growth. (Sennett 1994, 268.)

The movement of municipal parks in Germany dates to the early 19th century. In 1815 the Stadtbaumeister Harte of Magdeburg wrote a letter to the city council, calling attention to the destruct of public gardens around the city occurred during the Napoleonic wars. He pointed out that the town would be a sad place for those who loved rural pleasures, and that it was an obligation for the general good on the part of the authorities to do something about it. By that time, an old city property called Herrenkrug was already used as a recreational space, and in 1818 the Oberburgermeister Franke declared the need of a park provided by the municipality, as the Herrenkrug park was only to be finished in 1845. In 1824 Franke undertook the Friedrich-Wilhelmsgarten, which was probably the first public park in Germany. The park design was supervised by Peter Joseph Lenné. (Olmsted & Kimball 1928, 10-11.)

The parks movement gathered more pace alongside the spread of industrialism. The Friedrichshafen in Berlin was set off by the municipality as a public park in 1840, being followed by parks in Munich, Frankfurt, Dresden and Leipzig, just before the introduction of the New York Central Park.