Park

A park is an area of natural, semi-natural or planted space set aside for human enjoyment and

trails for walking, biking and other activities. Some parks are built adjacent to bodies of water or watercourses and may comprise a beach or boat dock area. Urban parks often have benches for sitting and may contain picnic tables and barbecue

grills.

The largest parks can be vast natural areas of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers (or square miles), with abundant wildlife and natural features such as mountains and rivers. In many large parks,

snowshoeing

in colder months. There are also amusement parks that have live shows, fairground rides, refreshments, and games of chance or skill.

History

Depiction of a medieval hunting park from a 15th-century manuscript

medieval

times for game hunting. They had walls or thick hedges around them to keep game animals (e.g., stags) in and people out. It was strictly forbidden for commoners to hunt animals in these deer parks.

These game preserves evolved into landscaped parks set around

stately home parks where the natural landscape was enhanced by landscape architects such as Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. The French formal garden such as designed by André Le Nôtre at Versailles

is an earlier and elaborate example. As cities became crowded, private hunting grounds became places for the public.

Early opportunities for the creation of urban parks in both Europe and the United States grew out of medieval practice to secure pasture lands within the safe confines of villages and towns. The most famous US example of a city park that evolved from this practice is the Boston Commons in Boston, Massachusetts (1634).^[1]

With the

natural beauty were also set aside as national parks

to prevent them from being spoiled by uncontrolled development.

Design

Hatanpää Park in Tampere, Finland

Park design is influenced by the intended purpose and audience, as well as by the available land features. A park intended to provide recreation for children may include a playground. A park primarily intended for adults may feature walking paths and decorative landscaping. Specific features, such as riding trails, may be included to support specific activities.

The design of a park may determine who is willing to use it. Walkers might feel unsafe on a

mixed-use path that is dominated by fast-moving cyclists or horses. Different landscaping and infrastructure may even affect children's rates of park usage according to gender. Redesigns of two parks in Vienna suggested that the creation of multiple semi-enclosed play areas in a park could encourage equal use by boys and girls.^[2]

Parks are part of the urban infrastructure: for physical activity, for families and communities to gather and socialize, or for a simple respite. Research reveals that people who exercise outdoors in green-space derive greater mental health benefits.[3] Providing activities for all ages, abilities and income levels is important for the physical and mental well-being of the public.^[4]^[5]

Parks can also benefit

pollinators, and some parks (such as Saltdean Oval in East Sussex) have been redesigned to accommodate them better.^[6] Some organizations, such as the Xerces Society are also promoting this idea.^[7]

Role in city revitalization

City parks play a role in improving cities and improving the futures for residents and visitors - for example, Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois [8] or the Mill River Park and Green way in Stamford, CT.^[9] One group that is a strong proponent of parks for cities is The American Society of Landscape Architects. They argue that parks are important to the fabric of the community on an individual scale and broader scales such as entire neighborhoods, city districts or city park systems.^[10]

Design for safety

Veale Gardens in Adelaide

, Australia

A well-lit path in Delhi's Garden of Five Senses

Parks need to feel safe for people to use them. Research shows that perception of safety can be more significant in influencing human behavior than actual crime statistics.[11] If citizens perceive a park as unsafe, they might not make use of it at all.^[5]

A study done in four cities; Albuquerque, NM, Chapel Hill/Durham, NC, Columbus, OH, and Philadelphia, PA, with 3815 survey participants who lived within a half mile of a park indicated that in addition to safety that park facilities also played a significant role in park utilization and that increasing facilities instead of creating an image of a safe park would increase utilization of the park.^[12]

There are a number of features that contribute to whether or not a park feels safe. Elements in the physical design of a park, such as an open and welcoming entry, good visibility (sight lines), and appropriate lighting and signage can all make a difference. Regular park maintenance, as well as programming and community involvement, can also contribute to a feeling of safety.^[13]

While Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) has been widely used in facility design, the use of CPTED in parks has not been. Iqbal and Ceccato performed a study in Stockholm, Sweden to determine if it would be useful to apply to parks.^[14] Their study indicated that while CPTED could be useful, due to the nature of a park, increasing the look of safety can also have unintended consequences on the aesthetics of the park. Creating secure areas with bars and locks lower the beauty of the park, as well as the nature of who is in charge of observing the public space and the feeling of being observed.^[14]

Active and passive recreation areas

Burnside Skatepark in Portland, Oregon

is one of the world's most recognizable skateparks.

Parks can be divided into active and passive

skateparks

. Active recreation such as team sports, due to the need to provide substantial space to congregate, typically involves intensive management, maintenance, and high costs. Passive recreation, also called "low intensity recreation" is that which emphasizes the open-space aspect of a park and allows for the preservation of natural habitat. It usually involves a low level of development, such as rustic picnic areas, benches and trails.

Many smaller neighborhood parks are receiving increased attention and valuation as significant community assets and places of refuge in heavily populated urban areas. Neighborhood groups around the world are joining together to support local parks that have suffered from urban decay and government neglect.

Passive recreation typically requires less management which can be provided at lower costs than active recreation. Some open space managers provide trails for physical activity in the form of walking, running, horse riding, mountain biking, snow shoeing, or cross-country skiing; or activities such as observing nature, bird watching, painting, photography, or picnicking. Limiting park or open space use to passive recreation over all or a portion of the park's area eliminates or reduces the burden of managing active recreation facilities and developed infrastructure. Passive recreation amenities require routine upkeep and maintenance to prevent degradation of the environment.

Parks owned or operated by government

National parks

Northeast Greenland National Park, the world's largest national park

A national park is a reserve of land, usually, but not always declared and owned by a national government, protected from most human development and pollution. Although this may be so, it is not likely that the government of a specific area owns it, rather the community itself. National parks are a protected area of International Union for Conservation of Nature Category II. This implies that they are wilderness areas, but unlike pure nature reserves, they are established with the expectation of a certain degree of human visitation and supporting infrastructure.

While this type of national park had been proposed previously, the United States established the first "public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people", Yellowstone National Park, in 1872,^[15] although Yellowstone was not gazetted as a national park. The first officially designated national park was Mackinac Island, gazetted in 1875. Australia's Royal National Park, established in 1879, was the world's second officially established national park.^[16]

The largest national park in the world is the Northeast Greenland National Park, which was established in 1974 and currently protects 972,001 km² (375,000 sq mi).^[17]^[18]

Sub-national parks

In some

the Australian state of Victoria, these are known as state parks, whereas in Argentina, Canada and South Korea, they are known as provincial or territorial parks. In the United States, it is also common for individual counties

to run parks, these are known as county parks.

Urban parks

Yoyogi Park is a large urban park in Tokyo

.

A park is an area of open space provided for recreational use, usually owned and maintained by a local government. Parks commonly resemble

Grass is typically kept short to discourage insect pests and to allow for the enjoyment of picnics and sporting activities. Trees are chosen for their beauty and to provide shade

.

Some early parks include the

la Alameda de Hércules, in Seville, a promenaded public mall, urban garden and park built in 1574, within the historic center of Seville; the City Park

, in Budapest, Hungary, which was property of the Batthyány family and was later made public.

An early purpose built public park was

Princes Park in the Liverpool suburb of Toxteth, laid out to the designs of Joseph Paxton from 1842 and opened in 1843. The land on which the Princes park was built was purchased by Richard Vaughan Yates, an iron merchant and philanthropist, in 1841 for £50,000. The creation of Princes Park showed great foresight and introduced a number of highly influential ideas. First and foremost was the provision of open space for the benefit of townspeople and local residents within an area that was being rapidly built up. Secondly it took the concept of the designed landscape as a setting for the suburban domicile, an idea pioneered by John Nash at Regent's Park

, and re-fashioned it for the provincial town in a most original way. Nash's remodeling of St James's Park from 1827 and the sequence of processional routes he created to link The Mall with Regent's Park completely transformed the appearance of London's West End. With the establishment of Princes Park in 1842, Joseph Paxton did something similar for the benefit of a provincial town, albeit one of international stature by virtue of its flourishing mercantile contingent. Liverpool had a burgeoning presence on the scene of global maritime trade before 1800 and during the Victorian era its wealth rivalled that of London itself.

The form and layout of Paxton's ornamental grounds, structured about an informal lake within the confines of a serpentine carriageway, put in place the essential elements of his much imitated design for Birkenhead Park. The latter was commenced in 1843 with the help of public finance and deployed the ideas he pioneered at Princes Park on a more expansive scale. Frederick Law Olmsted visited Birkenhead Park in 1850 and praised its qualities. Indeed, Paxton is widely credited as having been one of the principal influences on Olmsted and Calvert's design for New York's Central Park of 1857.

There are around an estimated 27,000 public parks in the United Kingdom, with around 2.6 billion visits to parks each year. Many are of cultural and historical interest, with 300 registered by Historic England as of national importance. Most public parks have been provided and run by local authorities over the past hundred and seventy years, but these authorities have no statutory duty to fund or maintain these public parks.^[19] In 2016 the Heritage Lottery Fund’s State of UK Public Parks reported that “92 per cent of park managers report their maintenance budgets have reduced in the past three years and 95 per cent expect their funding will continue to reduce”.^[20]

Central Park in New York City is the most-visited urban park in the U.S.^[21]

Another early public park is the Peel Park, Salford, England opened on August 22, 1846.^[22]^[23]^[24] Another possible claimant for status as the world's first public park is Boston Common (Boston, Massachusetts, USA), set aside in 1634, whose first recreational promenade, Tremont Mall, dates from 1728. True park status for the entire common seems to have emerged no later than 1830, when the grazing of cows was ended and renaming the Common as Washington Park was proposed (renaming the bordering Sentry Street to Park Street in 1808 already acknowledged the reality).

Linear parks

A

greenbelt

.

Country parks

In some countries, especially the United Kingdom, country parks are areas designated for recreation, and managed by

local authorities

. They are often located near urban populations, but they provide recreational facilities typical of the countryside rather than the town.

Military parks

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.^[25]

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v t e Real estate developments
Commercial	Airport Business park Commercial area Mixed-use development Office building Port inland Power center Retail park Riverfront Shopping center (Shopping mall) Shopping streets and districts
Industrial	Business cluster Industrial district Industrial park Technology centers
Residential	Agrihood Boarding house Bungalow court City block Company town Conservation community Executive home Golf course community Gated community Housing estate Intentional community Luxury apartment Mixed-use development Model dwellings for the poor Multifamily residential Penthouse apartment Private community Public housing Residential area Retirement community Revenue house Rooming house Single room occupancy Subdivision Tract housing
Science/education	Campus Research park Satellite campus Science park
Municipal	Arcology Civic center Garden city movement Model village Planned cities Planned community Urban green space parks
Buildings	Apartment House types Skyscraper Tower block Villa
Miscellaneous	Brownfield land Cemetery Residential cluster development Construction Context theory Eminent domain Greenfield land Greyfield land Groundscraper Land-use planning Park Parking Playground Redevelopment Regional planning Urban design Urban planning Zoning

Authority control
International	FAST
National	France BnF data Germany Israel United States Latvia Japan Czech Republic
Other	Historical Dictionary of Switzerland Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine NARA