I’m talking about a massive park in the absolute heart of the city. Located such that is naturally surrounded by city high rises. *People are giving examples of parks that are way off in the boonies. I’m trying to say located centrally, heart of the city, you know where the high rises are. Yes I understand nyc has more, the point is centrally located.
Copied by younger cities in North Americ. You know, the cities younger than NYC that could have seen the value of setting aside a large area for parkland before it was developed.
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I live in Chicago and we do have a big centrally located park, along with other smaller parks scattered around. It’s down by the lake, and they keep that big stupid bean there.
Pro tip for tourists, if you absolutely have to go see the bean don’t touch it; everybody touches the damn thing and you will get sick. Go look at the Picasso instead. It’s on all of the tourist attraction maps and way more interesting than a big shiny bean.
Why would I ever choose to go to Chicago? From an outside perspective it sounds like a total shit hole.
Was just out there a month ago. Place was clean, good weather too. A lot of things to do. Nothing what they’ve shown in the news. I stayed near the loop, didn’t travel south, as I had no reason to.
Leaving Chicago, the taxi driver said he wanted people to continue thinking Chicago was a shit town, because it keeps rent down. Funny.
That’s fair.
Nah, Chicagos a great town with excellent food, culture, museums and events. Lots of festivals in the summer, it runs along a beatuiful lake with nice beaches, it has great people, all in all I love Chicago. Full disclosure, there are neighborhoods with high crime, it is unfortunately super segregated, and cold as hell in the winter.
I’m personally fond of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. They had the Bodies exhibit the time I visited and it was incredible.
Just so you know, you’re probably not being downvoted by any Chicagoans.
Even the most devout Chicagoan evangelist will just typically grunt and nod in response to someone calling Chicago a shithole.
We understand that Chicago is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Baltimore, Maryland has a gigantic green space (second biggest woodland park in the United States according to Wikipedia) right in the center of the city called Leakin Park. It’s gorgeous during the day time, but unfortunately during the evening most people avoid it because it’s become a dumping ground for bodies.
It’s become known in the region as one of the most dangerous parks in the United States, which super sucks.
Also has Patterson Park which is huge, minus the body dumping.
City Park here in NOLA is 1300 acres (50% larger than Central Park) and was established in 1854, making it three years older as well. Stay losing NYC! 😜
Happy Munich noises. Bigger than central park too 😉
Came here to write that. Central Park didn’t need to be copied because a lot of European cities had that decades to centuries before.
Tiergarten Berlin, Schlossgarten Stuttgart, Praterinsel Vienna, Planten un Blomen Hamburg, Maschsee/Eilenriede in Hannover, Züriberg Zürich, just to name a few in the Germanophone world.
It’s possibly harder to find a large city who hasn’t some equivalent than find one with it - and most without one lost it after WW2 and American city planning.
Yeah, I think OP is asking strictly from a US perspective (although being USdefaultist by not specifying it), because I can’t really think of any large European city which doesn’t have realitve large parks in the city center or next to it.
Pittsburgh has three major parks in the city limits - Point State Park downtown, which is a small area that hosts events, Schenley Park which has plenty of hiking, biking, and fishing, and Frick Park which is massive and allows you to get lost in the forest in the middle of the city. It’s a great way to get out of crowded areas without traveling.
Didn’t Los Angeles have central green space (not on the scale of central park in NYC, but large) that was gradually eaten away and paved over with time?
Kings park, Perth.
Bigger than central park and high up on the only hill for miles
One of the great design tricks of Central Park is that at almost every entrance you go downhill. You are instantly cut off from the city noise.
Louisville has Cherokee park that was designed by Olmsted, same dude as Central Park.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Law_Olmsted
When I lived there I loved to go dirt trail running in the middle of the city.
Forest Park, St Louis MO
The English Garden in Munich comes close: A long park reaching almost into the very center of the city.
Hyde Park in Sydney
Because its really hard to do it retroactively. Not too many people cared about its aesthetic/health or public value when compared to the commercial real estate value
The whole point was to do it proactively.
That ship sailed 120+ years ago
Thus the question, why wasn’t it copied more.
Well, they answered your question
Vancouver - Stanley Park (downtown), Queen Elizabeth Park (geographic center), Central Park (Metrotown)… The lack of parks in US cities is a matter of poor planning.
Check out Forest Park in St. Louis. It’s nice.
I spent a day there last time I was in St. Louis. It was really nice. There were a few museums and the zoo you could all go to for free.
We have lots of large parks in my city. Not central park sized, but we are not an NYC sized city. It’s basically a small city incorporated into the forest. Sometimes they try to capitalize some of it, but the voters reliably shut them down, we love our green spaces.
