PARK DESIGN IN CITY PLANNING 



City planning to-day is the revivalist, park development the resident 

 pastor. 



Many cities are accredited with successful city planning when they 

 do not deserve it ; many cities are remarked upon as being beautifully 

 designed when exactly the reverse is true. And why? Because a city 

 poorly laid out but abounding in beautiful parks will inevitably receive 

 favourable comment, for the observer judges a city by its parks rather 

 than by its plan. The converse is equally true ; for unless or until city 

 parks are well designed and developed, they will discredit the beauty 

 of the best studied city plan. A civic system, the park units of which 

 are no-matter-how-well disposed and distributed in relation to the city 

 plan, will gain but little credit in that respect until the parks in 

 themselves are a credit. 



City planning per se has in one respect an almost negative effect ; 

 the absence of it is forcefully deprecated, but the existence of it is 

 scarcely noticed except by comparison. It is the lack of good city 

 planning rather than the presence of it that attracts attention. That 

 is why the history of many cities is one of redesigning rather than one 

 of designing. City planning is also often so anticipatory as to bring 

 discredit in its initial steps. It may be so far-sighted that the purpose 

 of the first steps in its development will not be self-obvious, and there- 

 fore will frequently serve as an obstacle in the path of its eventual 

 accomplishment. An interesting observation in this connection is 

 found in Lyell's " Travels in the United States," Volume I, page 111, 

 on the occasion of his second visit to Boston: 



" When we had journeyed eighteen miles into the country I was told we 

 were in Adams Street, and afterwards, when in a winding lane with trees on 

 each side, and without a house in sight, that we were in Washington Street, 

 but nothing could surprise me again after having been told one day in New 

 Hampshire, when seated on a rock in the midst of the wild woods, far from any 

 dwelling, that I was in the exact centre of a town." 



28 



