The City beautiful planning thread as perfected or perverted in the embodiment of Daniel Burnham containing civic centres, large parks and large boulevards was modified into City practical planning by such planners as Charles Mulford Robinson (1869-1917), John Nolen (1869-1937) and Frederick Law Olmsted junior (1870-1957) with more concern to sanitary, social and health issues, housing conditions and traffic (Krueckeberg 1983, 280). Nolen, influenced by the Garden City ideals, maintained that the City beautification methods applied by his contemporaries were fatal. Instead he stressed social problems which were overlooked by the City Beautiful movement, suggesting that an adequate amount of open spaces to guarantee daily exercise was essential, and not only large city parks were sufficient for this but an easy enough access for everyone to local recreation areas had to be secured, thinking with Olmsted junior cities as complexes of interrelated neighbourhood parks (ibid., 72-98).
In the 1907 City plan for St. Louis the Committee on Civic Centers of the St. Louis League suggested purchasing and developing public parks. (ibid., 73-74.) Benjamin C. Marsh, Secretary of the Congestion of Population Commission, concerned about congestion of population in large cities, suggesting e.g. adequate provision of parks, playgrounds and open spaces (ibid. 84-90).The early 20th century “reform parks” were to organize activities, since the masses were considered incapable of undertaking their own recreation. Users of reform parks were mainly children and men from working class. The early reform parks were often called as playgrounds as they were considered to be safer environments for children as streets. The launch of these parks was sometimes thought to solve neighbourhood problems, often established at unused land resorts given as donations. (Cranz 1982., 61-81.) When earlier parks were promoted as places of tranquillity, these parks were often lively and rather noisy places (ibid., 98-99).
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