Planning Roundtable: What Makes a Good Urban Park?

Jane Jacobs preferred the "ballet of the good city sidewalk" over urban parks. In fact, she was critical of many parks, as they existed in 1950s Robert Moses shaped New York City. Much has changed in park design since Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and yet many of her prescriptions and warnings are as relevant as ever. In this article, five urban planning gurus—three from San Diego, one from NYC, and one from Portland OR—give their views about what makes a good urban park, both in general and in their particular city. The article concludes:

Design, location, context, programming, maintenance, unified planning, and other factors mean everything. . . Much has been learned from and since Jane Jacobs’ milestone of urban understanding about park design and location but urban parks do still on occasion fail. Jacobs warned against planning on the basis of statistics or metrics (“disorganized complexity”), e.g., one park per so many people or per so many square miles. A successful park depends on understanding the many interrelated elements in a neighborhood and successfully planning for them – including funding for maintenance and operation.