Imitating nature at the expense of small formalized urban parks

Released: July 31, 2008

Frederick Law Olmsted is most noted for designing Central Park in Manhattan. His method of landscape design now serves as the main model for how we design parks in America. But James Howard Kunstler believes that our ongoing attempts to replicate the Olmsted park have created many urban parks with serious shortcomings. Kunstler also warns listeners not to ask for “green space” in their towns because “green space” is an abstraction. Instead he urges people to learn the vocabulary of landscape architecture to be able to ask for specific park features. Released: Sept. 31, 2008.

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KunstlerCast_25.mp3
( 19 MB | 27 mins.)

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Congress Park in Saratoga Springs N.Y., designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.