PARK DESIGN IN CITY PLANNING 



astically published by various cities within the last few years, and 

 immediately allowed to fall into the limbo of supposedly impracticable 

 projects, have brought home to the city planning experts the futility 

 of too general recommendations; and we find many of them to-day 

 including quite definitely drawn park plans as a part of their recom- 

 mendations. Such well-meant effort on the part of others than com- 

 petent landscape designers is questionable, however; for, although 

 many civic experts have had sufficient academic training in design to 

 enable them to prepare park plans after a fashion, those of them who 

 are not architects would never attempt the comparable task of submit- 

 ting detailed designs for the buildings about proposed civic centres. 

 Exactly as the landscape architect, though capable in a general way 6f 

 advising civic boards on the design of their city, cannot rate with the 

 civic expert who by special training and research has fitted himself to 

 undertake such work, the civic adviser should not expect to undertake 

 actual park design without training in the subject. 



AMBITIOUS ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS AND NURSERYMEN 



Architects, likewise, who may have been successful in general civic 

 architecture, and have achieved some special distinction in the com- 

 position of civic groups, frequently set themselves up as city planners. 

 Cities should hesitate in accepting their advice on problems of park 

 design except in its architectural aspect. A reputable architect appre- 

 ciates that his point of view is prone to be disproportionately archi- 

 tectural, and hesitates to prepare park plans without the association 

 of a competent landscape designer; and the architect who poses as 

 capable in all lines is usually a jack of all trades, capable in none. Due 

 to the unexpectedness with which the demand for civic planning has 

 come upon America, a temporary lack of specially trained men has 

 occurred, with the result that candidates from all the allied professions 

 have aspired to present themselves as qualified for the remodelling of a 



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