Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities - Softcover

Peter Harnik

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597266841 ISBN 13: 9781597266840

Publisher: Island Press, 2010

Synopsis

Urban Green explores new and innovative ways for built out cities to add much-needed parkland. After first exploring the question of why urban parks are needed, Peter Harnik looks at how much parkland is truly possible and where specific investment can go. Among the book s many examples and practical solutions are reusing the land from defunct factories to sharing schoolyards, from decking parks over highways to allowing more activities in cemeteries, from eliminating parking lots to uncovering buried streams, and more. While no strategy alone is perfect, and each has its own set of challenges, collectively they suggest a path toward making cities more beautiful, sociable, fun, ecologically sound, and successful.

About this title

Review:

"Peter Harnik ...reveals how the push to preserve and promote our nation's urban parks is one of the most exciting frontiers in urban planning, dramatically changing the way we think about what is possible in a 21st-century city."--Michael Bloomberg "Mayor of New York City, from his foreword "

"Urban Green is part reference manual, part guidebook and part inspiration. It provides an unprecedented look at the re-greening of urban America. From rail trails to rooftops to landfills, Peter Harnik shows us how to find and fund green spaces for the next century."--Edward T. McMahon "Charles E. Fraser Chair for Sustainable Development "

"Urban Green is a testament to the progress of the livable communities movement. While others cringe at urban eyesores--underutilized parking lots, vacant commercial areas, and abandoned rail lines--Harnik sees new green spaces for residents to stroll, garden, play, socialize, and enjoy their natural heritage. Best of all, he offers practical advice on politics and funding, providing community leaders with tools for turning their vision into reality."--Congressman Earl Blumenauer "Oregon third congressional district "

"Specific, succinct, well-written, full of innovative ideas from all over--Peter Harnik's Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities is all one could ask of a practical planning book."--Planning

"With this timely and valuable book, Harnik has done a great service. Public-sector officials, planners, and designers will find it useful, but so will community activists, neighborhood groups, and anybody else who uses an urban park. Which, in a densely populated city, is just about everyone."--Landscape Architecture Magazine

"Harnik conveys in pragmatic, no-nonsense terms what it takes to make the outdoor rooms of a city serve the true needs of their users. Fundamental questions are asked about which kinds of parks to build, how much to build, for whom to build, and where the parks should go. The answers imply new or renewed solutions and new ways of defining the very term parks."--Urban Land

About the Author:

Peter Harnik is director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Landand author of Inside City Parks, a book about the park and recreation systems of the 25 largest U.S. cities. In 2003, his research resulted in The Excellent City Park System: What Makes it Great and How to Get There. Previous to that, he was co-founder of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy.

About this edition

• Publisher: Island Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1597266841
• ISBN 13: 9781597266840
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208