a look through my lens

The Role of Public Parks in American Society

This is an essay I wrote for my ENV class that really hits home for me. One of the sited books, Last Child in the Woods, is among two of my favorite novels of all time (number 1 being The Talent Code.) I would highly recommend everyone read both novels and take time to contemplate what I’ve written in this essay. Looking into the future of our nation, public parks are going to play a greater role than most of us probably imagined, and it’s important that we begin changing our world in a “greener direction” as soon as we possibly can—for our own benefit and that of our future generations.

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In the space of a century, the American experience of nature has gone from direct utilitarianism to electronic detachment. As Richard Louv points out in his bestselling book, Last Child in the Woods, “there is an increasing divide between humans and the natural world, and the consequences of that divide are incredibly traumatic to our society” (3). Not only does detachment from nature adversely affect environmental health, it also affects social, psychological, and spiritual health. Why? “As we grow separate from nature, we continue to separate from one another physically, and this separation leads to all kinds of psychological and social problems.” This is why public parks are such a crucial component of modern day cities. Public parks are conducive to physical and psychological well-being, environmental stability, and cultivating civic society—and as a result, the future of our nation depends on maintaining them.

“Today, we find ourselves continually on the alert, chased by an unending stampede of 2,000 pound automobiles and 4,000 pound SUVs. Even inside our homes the assault continues, with unsettling threatening images charging through our television screens” (Louv 43). With 85% of Americans currently living in metropolitan areas—many of which are severely lacking in park space—there is no escape from this electronic attack. As parents become increasingly fearful of the outside world, they bar their children indoors, unintentionally pushing them towards a ‘safe life’ of sedentary T.V. watching and food eating as a method of entertainment. The short-term effects of this sedentary lifestyle are childhood depression and childhood obesity—both of which have tripled in recent years. The long-term effects are even more severe: heart disease and early death. So what’s the solution to the sedentary epidemic? How can we fix the disastrous system we’ve developed and make people feel safe to experience the peace-inducing effects of nature they so desperately need? The answer is strangely simple: public parks.

Frederick Law Olmsted, a famous American landscape designer, was among the first to discover this truth. “Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our health” (104). When Olmsted created Central Park in New York City, his goal was not merely to create a place of recreation or an aesthetically pleasing green space—it was to cultivate civic society. He saw the destructive impact of metropolitan living and wanted to change the way that Americans interacted with each other and with nature. In order to do this, he realized he had to make people care about their community and the environment at large—to feel connected to it. Thus, he created public parks that were accessible to all people and integrated themes of both community and domesticity into their design.

Community, as we all know, is a feeling of fellowship with others that results from sharing common interests, attitudes, or goals. It is also defined as the idea of joint ownership or liability over an object. Domesticity, on the other hand, refers to caring for a property or space like it is your own; taking responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of what you consider to be your home. Both community and domesticity play a vital role in the upkeep of park systems as well as in the condition of the human soul. The combination of community and domesticity is a shared sense of space—an unspoken bond between people of all different backgrounds and socioeconomic classes that can only be found in one place: public parks. These parks break social boundaries that are imposed in nearly ever other social setting and give people a feeling of ownership that causes them to act in nurturing ways towards the environment and each other. This sense of nurturing responsibility trickles over into the third and final product of public parks: environmental sustainability.

Over the past 10 years, as population has rapidly increased and people have become increasingly aware of resource scarcity, sustainability has pushed its way to the forefront of academic discussion. “For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship.” Put simply, sustainability is “the ability to meet the needs of the present while contributing to the future generations’ needs.” With water and oil becoming increasingly scarce, and American’s looking to create more sustainable city systems for future generations—where people can bike almost anywhere to fulfill their basic needs, get the appropriate amount of daily physical activity, buy food locally, and ultimately use less oil in order to ensure the same quality of life—public parks are unquestionably crucial to the build-up of our cities. They provide the resources and ecosystems necessary to sustain life and promote healthy living.

Public parks are crucial to our future in a number of ways. First and foremost, they create an environment that allows people to escape from the electronic chaos of life in the city, which is crucial to our psychological well-being. Secondly, they cultivate civic society and encourage people to engage in gregarious, neighborly behavior with others they otherwise wouldn’t interact with. The design of public parks promotes themes of community and domesticity by creating spaces where people can interact socially or spend time alone in contemplation—both of which are essential to the human psyche and the creation of a shared sense of space. The feelings of shared ownership created by the communal and domestic conditions of the park lead to greater stewardship within the community and resultingly, greater environmental stability. With environmental stability comes increased oxygen emission, water quality, resource availability, and ultimately, greater general health… which leads all kinds of economic and social benefits. In short, parks are a priceless, vital component of healthy human life, and in order to maintain balance and create a more harmonious world, they must be put at the forefront of our country’s priority list.

Bibligraphy:

Garvin, Alexander, and Ronda Brands. Public Parks: The Key to Livable Communities. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print.

Louv, Richard. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin of Chapel Hill, 2005. Print.