Part V: Visions, Theory, and Practice Summary and Analysis

Frederick Law Olmsted's "Public Parks and the Enlargement of Towns" (1870) gives planning tips and guidelines for park creation. Furthermore, he provides tips for political changes as he describes the political and ideological rationale for green spaces within cities. The first of these is public health. Parks, he writes, disinfect, countering pollution and helping the city's inhabitants to lead cleaner lives. In the second place, they combat vice and social degeneration, giving citizens a much-needed change of seen and mixing place, almost as a center of the town. Finally, green space advance a democratic society, taking pressure off of different classes by giving them an area that they can all enjoy on the same terms.

Ebenezer Howard's "Author's Introduction" and "The Town-Country Magnet" (1898) present Howard's plan to convince the public of the...