298 LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



relation to each other and the city plan, have come to be a matter of 

 definite and detailed study. In general it is evident that areas inten- 

 sively devoted to play for children should be small, numerous, distrib- 

 uted through residential areas in accordance with density of popula- 

 tion, and bearing the closest relation to the schoolhouses in their 

 location ; that the smaller in-town parks of various kinds, and espe- 

 cially recreation centers, should be distributed with regard to density 

 of population both residential and also industrial and commercial ;: 

 that the landscape parks should be usually more on the outskirts of! 

 the city, shaped and located so as to block traffic as little as possible 

 and taking advantage of opportunities of existing landscape beauty 

 or possibilities of its creation. The large out-of-town parks and reser- 

 vations should be selected for their landscape beauty, present or pos- 

 sible, with due consideration of the probable growth of the community 

 and of other legitimate uses to which the land could be put, so that 

 the chosen park areas may meet recreational needs and not block the 

 future normal growth of the community. Both connecting these larger 

 recreation areas circumferentially, and particularly running radially 

 from the center of the town outwards, should be designed some system' 

 of parkways, that is, some provision whereby those who dwell in the 

 heart of the city may get out to the parks and back again to their homes 

 without having the recreation which they obtain from the open places 

 counteracted by a long journey through the very conditions from which . 

 they are seeking relief. 



Of all these different forms of outdoor recreation facilities we have 

 space in this book to discuss in detail but one, and we choose the large 

 landscape park, because the design of this lies perhaps more completely 

 than does that of some of the others in the province of the landscape 

 architect, and because these parks are in many ways a typical product 

 of American landscape architecture, in which a style of design* has been 

 to a considerable extent wrought out, a style which has had a great 

 effect on landscape design particularly in the United States. 



The Large The landscape park (see Drawing XXXV, opposite), at its best, 



Landscape oes more tnan to o flf er openness and freedom from the city's crowding 



and oppression, more than to provide naturally-growing trees and grass 



* Cf. Chapter IV, p. 57. 



