An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a municipal park (North America) or a public park, public open space, or municipal gardens (UK), is a park in cities and other incorporated places that offer recreation and green space to residents of, and visitors to, the municipality. The design, operation, and maintenance is usually done by government agencies, typically on the local level, but may occasionally be contracted out to a park conservancy, "friends of" group, or private sector company.
Common features of municipal parks include playgrounds, gardens, hiking, running and fitness trails or paths, bridle paths, sports fields and courts, public restrooms, boat ramps, and/or picnic facilities, depending on the budget and natural features available. Park advocates claim that having parks near urban residents, including within a 10-minute walk, provide multiple benefits.
History
A park is an area of open space provided for recreational use, usually owned and maintained by a local government. 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, with an increasing emphasis on reducing an urban heat island effect.
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 Városliget (City Park) in the City of Pest, what is today Budapest, Hungary, was a city property when afforestation started in the middle of the 18th century, from the 1790s with the clear aim to create a public park. Between 1799 and 1805 it was rented out to the Batthyány family to carry out such a project but the city had eventually taken back control and in 1813 announced a design competition to finally finish the park; works started in 1816.
Green Park and St James Park in London, c. 1833
An early purpose-built public park, although financed privately, was Princes Park in the Liverpool suburb of Toxteth. This was laid out to the designs of Joseph Paxton from 1842 and opened in 1843. The land on which the 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 in London) and re-fashioned it for the provincial town in a most original way. Nash's remodelling 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 sector. Liverpool had a burgeoning presence in 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 in Birkenhead. The latter commenced in 1843 with the help of public finance and deployed the ideas which Paxton had 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.
Another early public park, the Peel Park, Salford, England, opened on 22 August 1846.
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