A Walk in the Park: Two Important Parks on Opposite Sides of the World Aren’t as Different as You Might Think
Samantha Lee
Many Americans wake up on a sunny weekend and think to themselves, Today would be a good day to go to a park. Whether they later find themselves in iconic city parks like Central Park in New York City and Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta or in their neighborhood’s playground, Americans like to visit public parks.
In fact, according to the annual Americans’ Engagement with Parks survey, Americans visit their local parks and recreational facilities an average of 29 times a year. That means the average American might go to the park every other weekend or more.
The same survey says that the number one reason that Americans cite for visiting a local park is to be with family and friends. After that, the next popular reason is for exercise or physical activity, like walking.
Now, Americans aren’t the only ones that love visiting parks. Studies from around the world find that people love to visit their local parks. In Korea, people love parks and visit them for relaxation and walking, while in Kenya people like to picnic and play games in their public parks and in Argentina, people visit to enjoy nature and relax.
Taking a leisurely visit to a park to see friends, have a walk and wind down seems to be a commonality for park-goers around the world. Despite these important similarities in how people like to enjoy their public green spaces, cultural difference does dictate some of the activities that people enjoy participating in.
Each and every park-going experience is unique, in every city across the world. Each park and the culture in which it resides in has its own idiosyncrasies, and parks in two big cities on opposite sides of the world, Freedom Park in Charlotte and Parque Centenario in Buenos Aires are no different in that regard.
Freedom Park, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States of America
Connected to the rest of Charlotte through a network of greenways, Freedom Park is the pulsing heart of Charlotte’s green spaces. The park calls to people from all over the city every weekend, with its 7-acre lake at its center.
The element that makes Freedom Park a family favorite are the many playgrounds and jungle gyms that it holds, alongside the NFL Play KidsZone, which features a Panthers-themed obstacle course to get kids moving. The Park also sees many Little League baseball games and children’s soccer games because of the many sports fields near the park’s main entrance.
Alongside the sports facilities and playground equipment, Freedom Park also serves to connect its visitors to Charlotte’s nature. Between the Discovery Place Nature Museum and the demonstrative garden, both located in the outskirts of the park, visitors have plenty of opportunity to get to know many natural elements of the park.
“The park and its greenways are probably some of the best public spaces that Charlotte has,” explained long time Charlotte resident Sidrah Marotti. “I go to Festival in the Park almost every year. It’s my favorite time to be in the park.”
Festival in the Park has filled the park with works from local artists every fall since 1964 and is one of the most well-attended events at the park. It draws around 150 local artists for each edition of the festival, but the fun doesn’t stop there. Bands also come to play on the park’s lake-side stage and vendors come out with food and crafts for visitors to enjoy.
Whether it’s festival weekend or not, visitors can expect to find Freedom Park full of life. Charlotteans often host picnics, birthdays and even weddings in the park, especially when the weather starts to warm up, but they also don’t need any special occasion to come out to enjoy the parks many walking paths and green spaces.
Parque Centenario (Centennial Park), Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina
The expansive Parque Centenario joins three heavily populated neighborhoods in the geographical center of Buenos Aires. With its fish-filled lake, public amphitheater and exercise equipment, the park usually fills from dawn to dusk with everyone from toddlers to dog walkers.
Like Freedom Park, Parque Centenario also houses a museum, the Bernardino Rivadavia Museum of Natural Science, as well as a stunning planetarium that holds shows for visitors to learn about the stars several nights a week. Once a year, the museums and parks all around the city open up at night on “Night of the Museums,” to show special exhibits. Parque Centenario is a popular destination for the event because of the two museums and the large park.
There are always plenty of activities going on in the park. Once a year, Buenos Aires Jazz Festival takes over the amphitheater for a weekend to host jazz concerts, while the city puts on several events a month for members of the neighborhood to get to know each other. During the World Cup, the city shows the games on a screen in the amphitheater and every weekend dog adoption agencies come out to show dogs that need homes. There’s never a shortage of activities to participate in.
It’s no wonder one of Argentines’ main motivations for visiting parks is to get out into nature when parks like Parque Centenario offer huge refuges from the concrete of the surrounding neighborhoods. In particular, Parque Centenario is home to 18 species of birds, including a species of green parrot, as well as the famous jacaranda trees that turn the city purple in the springtime.
On the weekends, the streets directly around the circular park shut down to allow vendors to take over the area lining the park. They sell everything from artisan goods to used clothes and electronics to antiques. These markets, known as “ferias,” are a popular attraction on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
The City of Buenos Aires government estimates that around 12,000 people visit the park every weekend, not just for the ferias, but also gathering for exercise groups, yoga classes, playdates, visits with friends and most importantly, to drink some mate in the afternoon.
Mate is a tea drink common in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, some parts of Brazil and some parts of the Middle East. Argentines share one mate gourd and a filtered straw called a “bombilla” to drink it. They take turns drinking, generally seated in a circle passing the drink around, while one person serves, who is known as the “cebador.”
The ritual of drinking mate is common in many settings in Argentine society, and many Argentines enjoy the drink with their friends or family in nature spaces across the country. Sharing the tea is seen as a social activity in and of itself; for many park-goers, drinking a few mates is a reason to get together outside and connect after a long week.
A Park’s A Park
Although these two city parks are a world apart and each enjoy their own set of quirks and values, they also have many features in common that show just how people across the world are all looking for the same thing in their city’s green space: to take a break from the speed of their day-to-day lives and engage in recreational activities with their loved ones. That is, to take a walk in the park.
