Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park, proposed that urban nature could function as a kind of spiritual medication. Cities, he argued, suffered grave drawbacks that afflicted inhabitants with loss of faith and lowness of spirit. Cultivated landscape, he and other reformers believed, could alleviate these miseries. Today, we ask urban parks to do even more than just make us happy and healthy. They must also fight climate change, leach toxins from the air, mitigate summer heat, absorb floodwaters, redeem garbage dumps, promote democracy, welcome birds, and generate revenue. Parks are hardworking places.
Miami Beach Soundscape Park: Located on the campus of the Frank Gehrydesigned New World Symphony building, this five-year-old oasis by the landscape architects West 8 brings the concert-hall experience outside. A long palm-tree-lined lawn provides a gathering area for free movies and concerts, as well as projections of performances next door.
Iwan Baan
Copenhagen has even sought to invest landscape with the power to heal social fractures. A half-mile strip of open space called Superkilen scythes through the ethnically varied Nrrebro neighborhood, mixing fragments of cultures as it goes. The artist group Superflex, the landscape designers Topotek 1, and the architecture firm BIG collaborated to segment the terrain into three color-coded portions: green, red, and black, each with its own topography. Here, division unifies, since nearly every immigrant or visitor will stumble across some artifact from back home. In the black square, toddlers slide out of a Japanese plastic octopus, teenagers sprint up artificial pin-striped hills, and adults perch on the tiled, starshaped Moroccan fountain to chat. A collection of international bric-a-brac dots the red section: a donuts sign from Pennsylvania, a set of Bulgarian chess tables, a Thai-boxing ring, and so on. Superkilen is both a magnet and a microcosm, luring neighbors to a common ground that is unique yet strangely familiar.
This new generation of public parks doesnt aim to block out the intensity of urban life, but to capitalize on it. Landscape weaves among towers, hard surfaces alternate with spongy lawns and delicate wetlands. Architectural follies frame views of skyline and horizon. On a spring afternoon in Santa Monica, one of those sharp California days when every cactus blade looks honed and dangerous against black shadows, I wandered through the new Tongva Park. The landscape firm Field Operations transformed a parking lot between City Hall and the ocean into a showy haven, meant to funnel some of the beachfront magic back to the upland blocks. I followed curving allees around contoured hillocks, and a corkscrewing ramp swept me up to a lookout point canopied by a swooping steel trellis. It struck me as simultaneously romantic and ruthless, a tough variation on bucolic charm.
The 606, Chicago: Named after the Windy Citys zip-code prefix, this year-old, 2.7-mile elevated greenway has inevitably been likened to New Yorks High Line. Designed by a multidisciplinary group led by Chicagos Collins Engineers, it, too, is a showcase for native trees and plants that is situated on abandoned elevated rail tracks. But it also features cycling access and a trail that dips and rises to reveal the steel walls of the original structure.
Iwan Baan
The ultimate expression of the new urban-greenway aesthetic is New Yorks Brooklyn Bridge Park, slung alongside the elevated Brooklyn-Queens Expressway opposite the pincushion of lower Manhattan. Over many years, the landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh has overseen the transformation of an abandoned stretch of pitted concrete and crumbling bulkheads into a busy little Eden. Meandering walkways lead past hidden gardens and lurking sculptures. Specialized piers jut out from a narrow ribbon of green, covering a range of habitats, from cultivated meadow to tiny beach, kayak launch to soccer fields.
On a warm summer evening, the skyline of lower Manhattan appeared to rear just a little higher against the fuchsia sky at twilight. It looked like decor for an immense block party. All of Brooklyn seemed to have slid toward the shoreline to play basketball, lounge, barbecue, run, and watch movies. As I observed the ebb and flow of activities, I wondered why it had taken so long. But greening derelict sites is neither easy nor cheap, and the benefits often seem uncertain. Planting a garden on a bridge (as Thomas Heatherwick has proposed for London) or building a bower on a pier (as he is doing in New York) strikes many as selfindulgent. But even if such Seussian extravaganzas fall through, or out of fashion, the need to plow parking lots into paradises wont abate for a long time. There just arent enough old hunting estates to go around.
Justin Davidson
