Does the US need a set of national urban parks? | Revisiting a comment from 2019

I bring this up because reading "backfile" articles about architecture and parks in the Toronto Globe and Mail, there is this year old article, "What Canada’s only national urban park can teach us about accessible, eco-friendly design." 

The Rouge National Urban Park is 30 minutes outside of Toronto, and is transit accessible ("One of the largest urban parks in North America is in Toronto and you can get there for free"), unlike most of the Canadian national parks in rural areas. (Or many US national parks and related federal park-type facilities.)

It's a single park unit, not an amalgamation of sites like an NPS National Recreation Area spanning multiple sites in an area like SF, Boston, Long Island, New York or outside Atlanta.

(WRT access issues and DC area national parks, see "A gap in planning across agencies: Prioritizing park access for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users compared to motor vehicle access" and "Revisiting: Access to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national park in Washington, DC.")

Nor is it a National Heritage Area which typically isn't urban-focused specifically, they are focused on a large region and interpreting it thematically, such as the Rivers of Steel NHA for Greater Pittsburgh (although the one in Baltimore is; Boston has a National Historical Park including many different sites), but an area of historic interested spread out in a region of many hundreds of square miles. (In the Detroit area there is even an (inter)national wildlife refuge along both the US and Canadian sides of the Detroit River.

(Separately, I've argued DC should manage itself as a heritage area, whether or not it is federally designated as such.  See "A unified National Park Service Visitor Center for DC (and the region).")

Toronto as seen in the distance from Rouge National Urban Park.

The article makes the point that the Canadian Park Service wants to develop other urban parks.  From the article:

Dubbed the “people’s park,” RNUP is currently Canada’s only national urban park. But not for long. To connect more urban dwellers to nature, the federal government committed $130-million in 2021 to establish more of them across the country – looking at cities such as Windsor, Ont., Edmonton and St. John’s, with the aim of creating six by 2025 and a total of 15 by 2030. Parks Canada believes that creating these parks will improve resident well-being, air and water quality and commemorate Indigenous knowledge and culture. The government also recently announced RNUP’s expansion, scrapping plans for an airport in Pickering in favour of adding to the park’s footprint.

As RNUP expands and new urban national parks take shape, the question of how these spaces should look and function becomes more important. Planners and designers are grappling with how to balance ecological health, accessibility and public use, while also considering the role of beauty and aesthetics.

On the long ago entry, "Defining National Park Service installations in DC as locally or nationally serving" (2019), Ed Drozd made the point that there ought to be a systematic provision of "national" parks throughout the country:

First, in re whether locally serving, thinking about it, I wonder what should be the goal of the National Park Service. Clearly part should be iconic areas. But, I do think selected locally serving areas, whether National Parks or National Historic Parks, might be important as well. Not just as outreach between the NPS and most people, but also to connect people to history and/or environment.

Part first amended: my wife lives near the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (full National Park) between Akron and Cleveland. I've been in it, and have been underwhelmed compared to, say, Acadia or Glacier, but it is truly lovely and can connect people to the environment like few other places in the area can.

But, why there but not places in NJ where I grew up? Granted there are National Historic Parks, but those are tied to history. However, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it doesn't matter because of the programming.

If we think about this in terms of spreading the wealth of national parks beyond the signature parks, as far as urban parks go, there are a bunch of NPS installations, mostly historic site based, some "national recreation areas" like around Boston, SF, Long Island, etc.  They do have an urban program, or at least they did before Trump.

In a follow up comment I was in agreement, but now I am not so sure.  DC has a lot of national park sites, big and small, but the Park Service hasn't been that great about taking care of them, partially because they have a big portfolio, a backlog of maintenance, and because they aren't set up well to deal with urban parks.

Even though they produced a couple decent reports on how to do it, the Urban Agenda Call to Action Initiative more generally, and wrt DC specifically, the Small Parks Management Strategies document (report).

Cracked and broken tiles mar the appearance of Welcome Park, a plaza dedicated to telling the story of William Penn’s vision for the city. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

And resource deficiencies aren't just a problem in DC, they are especially a problem at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park ("Large granite ‘join or die’ sculpture is among Independence Park improvements that still need funding," "Independence Park is ‘woefully behind’ for 2026 and in ‘grave need of resources,’ stakeholders say," "A Much-Needed Makeover: How Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park is getting ready for America’s 250th birthday," "More bikes and pedestrians, fewer cars: A $100M rethink of Philly’s historical district," Philadelphia Inquirer) 

-- Independence National Historical Park: Long-Range Interpretive Plan, National Park Service (2007)

A display describing the lives of enslaved people on the site where one of George Washington's homes once stood in Independence National Historical Park. Tom Gralish / Philadelphia Inquirer.

This is irrespective of the recent problems over historic interpretation ("The slavery exhibits at the President’s House are starting to be restored by the National Park Service," "Trump’s attempts to hide the unpleasant truths about our actual history are the real disparagement," PI) at the President's House and the Trump Administration's desire to whitewash over "minority" elements, especially "hurtful" history, as part of the good and bad of the national story.

What about networking existing urban parks?  Now, and I might be biased because I am on the board of an urban park (granted it's 1/6 the size of Central Park in NYC), and knowing also that there are extensive networks of state parks in addition to the large park inventories typical in major cities, that maybe like how within Montreal, they have a set of parks they refer to as Network of Large Parks, some more urban and sculpted, others more natural, that instead, somehow we think of these park systems as networks, and promote and support them that way.

Parks People, the parks advocacy group in Canada, has created such a network there ("Park People launches first-of-its-kind network for Canada’s large urban parks").  Of course in the US there is the Trust for Public Land, an advocacy and consulting group--with an urban parks unit, and various national and state professional associations.  But judging from what I know about parks in Salt Lake City and County, state parks or natural resources agencies don't work that closely to help local and county park systems in terms of a network.

Still a role for the Park Service (and other federal agencies).  There is still a place for NPS in terms of linking various federally controlled sites through National Recreation Areas, Urban National Heritage Areas, Boston's National Historical Park, historic sites and landmarks, and other resources.  There's talk in Southern California of designating some of the beaches a national par ("Parks service says federal control of local beaches could spur new, protections, conservation efforts and economic activity," Santa Monica Daily Press).

But like as opined in the above-cited blog entry, there needs to be a strong interpretational, historic, and cultural resources framework for determining why such parks and sites should be designated as federal.  

And new systems need to be built that better gather public input on these facilities, especially for places treated as more like public parks--ordinarily the Park Service is pretty distant from local input.

Which is why I recommend that local parks master plans also provide guidance wrt federal, state, and county parks within their boundaries.  Some planners say, we don't have any authority so why bother.  My counter is without guidance from us we guarantee we're not considered ("Federal shutdown as another example of why local jurisdictions should have more robust contingency and master planning processes," 2013).

And, there needs to be money appropriated to deal with additional responsibilities for new federally designated parks, rather than merely add to the current $10+ billion backlog in maintenance.

That doesn't even mention US Forests which may be located on the outskirts of urban areas such as in Los Angeles and the Uintah-Wasatch-Cache National Forest outside of Salt Lake.  The Forest Service has been underbudgeted for years, which has led to mergers of forests covering often disparate areas.

Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Nine | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework

 Gaps in park master planning frameworks

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part One | Levels of Service"

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Two | Utilizing Academic Research as Guidance"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Three | Planning for Climate Change/Environment"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Four | Planning for Seasonality and Activation"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Five | Planning for Public Art as an element of park facilities"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning, Part Six | Art(s) in the Park(s) as a comprehensive program"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Seven | Park Architectural (and Landscape Design) History" 
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Nine | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework" 

But while I have written a bunch about parks and transportational access, I didn't think to include that as another topic in the series.  The challenge is to ensure that as many parks as possible are accessible by transit.  This, and other forms of accessibility, should be covered in a parks master plan.

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Ten | Park transportational access" (2025)

Planning a park at the outset is about creating the landscape design and program.  Planning parks at the outset is "simple" in that land features are identified and either preserved or enhanced, and a program--who the park will serve and how it will be done through the provision of a set of facilities including landscape elements--will be created.

Plans cover land and water features, facilities, intended uses, and programming.  At the end of the process one of the ways the plan for the park gets expressed is through a map schematic.  While detailed, they are examples of more simplified planning documents.

Burgess Park, Southwark, London.  Note the level of detail specified on the schematic.

Updating the park master plan.  The planning issue comes up when you update a plan for a park.  How large is the park, what features does it have, is it cultural and historically significant or are there elements that deserve more detailed analysis, etc.  

Sugar House Park is almost 70 years old, and has different planning needs compared to when the park was created.  Items like vegetation and Parley's Creek were not covered thoroughly in the most recent (2008) master plan update process.  And there are more issues today like climate change and its effect on the park and patrons, and how to respond.   

Many of the "natural features" in Sugar House Park are specified in the post on climate change, "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Three | Planning for Climate Change." including Parley's Creek, its watershed, and flood control, water conservation, turf and plants, trees/arboretum, and fauna.  Topography and viewsheds are key elements also.

When the park experienced flooding via Parley's Creek in 2023.

Mobility, heat effects  and mitigation measures, park and park architectural history, buildings and structures and other facilities, programming, strategy and management of the park are the other necessary elements to have a plan that is truly comprehensive.

So a park or park system plan, to be comprehensive should be a combination of a cultural landscape plan, a regular park design and program plan, a capital improvements plan, an organization and management plan, a branding and marketing plan if the park is signature, a programming plan, and a fundraising plan.  

Or would you call those "natural elements" environmental, and call that section of a plan an environmental master plan?  Environmental plans have five elements: land, air, water, waste, and energy, some of which you would address only parenthetically in a park plan.

Definitely complicated depending on the nature of the particular park or park system being studied.  Because there are so many items, you can call it a cultural landscape plan because that approach is so macro focused and comprehensive.  

But maybe the issue is to just make the comprehensive park or park system plan more comprehensive, by including as many of these other items as possible for study, but not calling it a cultural landscape plan per se.

Cultural landscape planning approach.  A way to tie together the various planning threads for a park and/or a park system is to use the cultural landscape planning approach, which looks at sites more comprehensively than a typical parks plan.

I think that it is in next stage planning where the cultural landscape approach becomes more relevant to parks planning.  For Sugar House Park, the elements to address in more depth would be related to the land, water, vegetation, buildings and history.  

Cultural Landscapes

A cultural landscape is a place with many layers of history that evolves through design and use over time. A cultural landscape embodies the associations and uses that evoke a sense of history for a specific place. 

Physical features of cultural landscapes can include trees, buildings, pathways, site furnishings, water bodies – basically any element that expresses cultural values and the history of a site. 

Cultural landscapes also include intangible elements such as land uses and associations of people that influenced the development of a landscape. Cultural landscapes include neighborhoods, parks and open spaces, farms and ranches, sacred places, etc.

However, the cultural landscape approach is usually applied at a large scale.  In the US, it's used most often for creating management plans for National and State Heritage Areas, which can cover hundreds of square miles and hundreds of separately owned cultural resources.  

ATHA visitor center in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Maryland has a National Heritage Area in Baltimore and a program that designates state heritage areas.  

Planning occurs at two scales, for the heritage area as a whole (ATHA management plan), focused on the big picture and identifying historic themes, and plans for individual sites like house museums, parks, etc.  

The plans for individual units range from park or museum master plans, to house museum plans (building preservation, marketing, etc.). 

-- Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes, The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties
-- Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes, Preservation Brief 36
-- How to Evaluate and Nominate Designed Historic Landscapes, National Register Bulletin 18
-- Guide to Cultural Landscape Reports: Contents, Process and Techniques

-- The Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation
-- The Cultural Landscape Foundation

The most distinctive element about large scale cultural landscape planning is that interpretation is organized around the major historic themes of the area (comparable to identifying the period of cultural significance for a historic district, "What is the Period of Significance and what does it mean for Cleveland Park?," Cleveland Park Historical Society).  So the Rivers of Steel Heritage Area in Pittsburgh didn't include one particular mining area as a resource, because it was associated with the steel industry of Cleveland.

One Maryland State Heritage area is the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area in Prince George's County, abutting DC.  The state areas focus on highlighting local historic assets and marketing them as a tourism product.  

The marketing program may include visitor centers, the organization of cultural resources into "trails," events, wayfinding and interpretive signage, brochures and other elements. 

Parks and park systems are simpler units than heritage areas and a modified approach to planning at the scale of the cultural landscape makes more sense. Obviously not all parks and local parks system are the same.  And only some parks probably rise to the level of high historic/cultural significance.

The challenge is to do more comprehensive planning for the parks that should be planned at that level of detail. I argue a more simplified approach to cultural landscape planning can be adopted for master planning for local parks systems and individual parks.  Using the principles, not the level of detail.  

Broad Branch Park in New Jersey is a rare example of a local park with a cultural landscape plan, which took several years to create.  The report has six volumes and totals over 1,000 pages.

• Existing conditions
• History of the park and critical periods of development
• Hydrology, infrastructure, and historic fabric
• Structures in the park
• Vegetation in the park
• Treatment and management

Such detailed planning for an individual park is beyond the capacity of most parks systems.  Note that many parks conduct Cultural Landscape studies using the methods of the National Register of Historic Places.  

For example, the Cultural Landscape report (vol. 1, vol. 2) for the Eleanor Roosevelt Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York makes a number of treatment recommendations:

• Improve Landscape Condition
• Protect and Enhance Historic Setting
• Reestablish Historic Field and Forest Patterns
• Perpetuate Historic Managed Vegetation
• Enhance Historic Character of Roads and Walks
• Provide Effective Deer Control
• Maintain Compatible Park Furnishings
• Expand Landscape Interpretation

The 1983 Plan to restore and revive Central Park in Manhattan is a great example of this kind of plan for a more local, but significantly historic resource. 40 years later the book still reads so well, and offers a lot of guidance for contemporary parks planning.

-- Rebuilding Central Park: A Management and Restoration Plan

Again, such reports are focused on identification and maintenance of historic resources, while for a contemporary park or park system, only some elements may be historic, but application of the analytical  framework of cultural landscape planning is relevant.  

The challenge is identifying certain resources as historic and recognizing this and treating them appropriately, while mixing in other planning approaches to other elements of park resources.

A good way to contrast first stage versus second stage parks planning would be the Rebuilding Central Park plan of 1983, to revive a park constructed starting in the 1850s, or the Bryant Park program, versus the creation of the High Line in Manhattan, Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn. or Millennium Park (2009 Rudy BRuner Award: Silver Medal winner) in Chicago.

This came up with Sugar House Park and planning for replacement pavilions.  I argued the approach was a-historic and failed to acknowledge the relevance of the architectural history of park buildings and structures to the decision making process ("Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Seven | Park Architectural History and Design").

For Sugar House Park, the elements relevant to a cultural landscape second stage planning approach would be: 

• site history (former prison)
• architectural history of the park (some materials from the prison are used in some structures that exist today) and area
• as well as park architectural history more generally (parkitecture style)
• viewsheds towards the Wasatch Front Mountains
• Parley's Creek (natural) and the pond (man-made)
• topography, in particular the hills (my line is that hills are a competitive advantage for the park compared to other parks in Salt Lake City, which are mostly flat--two areas are especially popular for sledding) 
• tree cover and management (treating the trees collectively as an arboretum--we are in the process of getting Level One accreditation from ArbNet, and will continue to develop this concept over the years) 

Adding the cultural landscape lens to parks planning.  In parks master planning updates, agencies should endeavor to identify important historic and cultural elements for each park, although just thinking about Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City parks, most parks do not rise to this level.  

For signature parks, it shouldn't be hard to identify the elements that for future planning purposes, qualify as significant and relevant to cultural landscape approaches to planning.  

Does that mean a cultural landscape study should be conducted for each park that qualifies?  That's hard to say.  Many parks departments don't have that kind of infrastructure and funding, although they could work with local historic preservation offices to secure some. 

Maybe doing the equivalent of a "windshield survey"--a term from historic preservation where you do a quick visual assessment of a property to determine if it is a significant or contributing resource to a potential historic district--is enough (Bulletin 24: Guidelines for Local Surveys, NRHP), provided that the identified elements get the additional attention deserved within the planning process.

Salt Lake City.  To its credit, the Salt Lake City Public Lands Department (broader than "just" parks) has done an assessment of parks in terms of their cultural and historic resources (memo).  Five parks were designated as particularly significant and a cultural landscape study has been completed for Liberty Park (created 1881), while studies are underway for Pioneer Park (dating to 1847 as a public facility)--the signature Downtown park, and Allen Park (which for quirky reasons is culturally significant, dating to the 1940s).  The intent is to produce such studies for 11 parks in total.  But funding hasn't been secured.

I can't claim to have read hundreds of parks master plans, but this kind of identification of particular parks with significant historic and cultural resources is unusual.  

On the other hand, the language of the memo as submitted to the city's Historic Landmarks Commission hasn't made it into the city's most recently updated parks plan, ReImagine Nature, although this plan is more of a vision framework than a master plan.

Salt Lake County.  I am not so familiar with the Salt Lake County system, but most of the parks were created after 1960, and most don't have historic elements.  

Although, some parks in some communities across the county may date to the 1800s (that's when the area was settled by Caucasians) and early 1900s, and often have elements relevant to historic and cultural preservation.

The best way to ensure that cultural and historic resources are considered within parks master planning is to take the Salt Lake City approach and do a broad survey of park resources, and determine which parks require differentiated treatment when it comes to further planning and updated plans for specific parks. 

Gaps in Parks Master Planning, Part Seven | Park Architectural (and Landscape Design) History

 Gaps in park master planning frameworks

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part One | Levels of Service"

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Two | Utilizing Academic Research as Guidance"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Three | Planning for Climate Change/Environment"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Four | Planning for Seasonality and Activation"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Five | Planning for Public Art as an element of park facilities"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning, Part Six | Art(s) in the Park(s) as a comprehensive program"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Seven | Park Architectural (and Landscape Design) History" 
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Civic Engagement"
-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Nine | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework" 

But while I have written a bunch about parks and transportational access, I didn't think to include that as another topic in the series.  The challenge is to ensure that as many parks as possible are accessible by transit.  This, and other forms of accessibility, should be covered in a parks master plan.

-- "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Ten | Park transportational access" (2025)

This topic was one of the first that struck me as a significant gap in parks planning. 

While park master plans tend to not reference built environment and landscape architectural history, the reality is that architectural historians do this kind of evaluation all the time, publish books and reports, etc. about parks and designers like Olmsted.

For example, the Library of American Landscape History  specializies in this field.  One of their most recent books is Boston's Franklin Park: Olmsted, Recreation, and the Modern City.  According to the publisher:

This book is the first full historical treatment of Franklin Park, providing the analysis that confirms its place as one of the great works of nineteenth-century American art. Illuminating the history of the park and its popularity in the early twentieth century, Ethan Carr also describes its decline and the new plans for its renewal, as the City of Boston, working with the surrounding neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain, commits funding and expertise to assure that Franklin Park continues to improve the lives of the people it was created for.

But within the parks profession, the idea of applying the architectural history lens to master planning hasn't been taken up.

Park architecture and design. At Sugar House Park, we are replacing pavilions as part of addressing $20+ million in unfunded state of good repair projects, plus trying to incorporate some new ideas into rebuilding old facilities.  

The originally proposed new structure is stark, severe and decidedly modern.  It doesn't fit the park's architectural history or landscape.  But I needed a narrative to explain why and to be able to convince a majority of board members to move in a different direction.

What it made me realize is that at the local and state level, there isn't a good understanding, codification, and application of park architectural planning history to current parks master planning ("I discovered a massive omission in local parks master planning: it fails to discuss architecture and design in an overt way"). 

It never occurred to me before, when reading park master plans, that architecture is never mentioned as an element, although of course it makes up the bulk of discussion in specific plans for buildings. 

Railroad park tourism as an architectural movement.  The approach to park architecture in the US was shaped by how passenger railroads promoted tourism to Western national parks.  

These parks were created before the formal creation of the National Park Service.  (Note that the railroads were a driving force in the creation of the National Park Service, because of how important parks-related tourism was to their business.)

To promote tourism-based ridership, railroads focused  attention on developing national parks as destinations by  constructing lodges and other buildings using a rustic style of wood and stone, using building materials from the regions of particular parks, and then using those facilities to drive visitation.

As visitorship increased, the park rustic architectural style influenced people's perceptions of how a park's facilities were supposed to look.  

It is likely that park officials and stakeholders from around the country visited these national parks, experienced the structures and the way they were integrated into the landscape, took these lessons and ideas back home, and aimed to implement a form of park rustic style appropriate in their local situation and context.

NPS architectural style: rustic style/parkitecture. 

When the National Park Service was created in 1916, it kept the same approach to park building architecture that had been developed by the railroads.

The style, called NPS rustic and/or parkitecture, features natural materials primarily stone and wood, with a focus on the use of regionally significant materials like flagstone or river rocks, cedar wood, red rock, etc.  

The same approach to architectural style of buildings and structures was adopted by other federal land agencies like the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

Park rustic style pavilion at Jordan Park, Salt Lake.  Note the fireplace made of stone.  Because of vandalism and other issues, parks these days tend to not build fireplaces.

The basic thrust is to snugly fit buildings into nature and the landscape, rather than for the buildings to stick out.  

-- Park and Recreation Structures, NPS

-- Shelters and Recreation Facilities, NPS

-- Camp Stoves and Fireplaces, US Forest Service

Adoption of park rustic throughout the country. Park rustic ended up being "imported" to other communities, because after visiting parks out west, professionals and other visitors took their cues on park design from those parks.

State and local park adoption of the park rustic style spurred by the New Deal.  This was accelerated by the New Deal.  State and local parks construction projects used the same design manuals ("The Best Kind of Building" The New Deal Landscape of the Northern Plains, 1993-42 Northern Plains, 1993-42 ," Great Plains Quarterly, "Indiana's First State Park: A New Deal Delight," Living New Deal).

Chapter 5: Resorting to the Woods: State Parks and Recreation Demonstration Areas

EVEN MORE THAN PARKWAYS, playgrounds, and metropolitan parks, state parks were a product of the Depression. During the New Deal these recreation landscapes developed to a level of crude finish and beauty unequaled before or since. The Recreation Demonstration Areas, which were a kind of training ground for the state park, began, flourished, and died with the New Deal. 

-- Public Landscape of the New Deal

Parkitecture prioritizes “architecture that is of and respectful of the natural landscape.” The first statement of policy for NPS called for “harmonizing improvements such as roads, trails, and buildings with nature" ("Parkitecture: past and present," Whole Trees).

Craig Thomas Discovery and Vistor Center, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming.

Postwar park building architecture has been updated, called Park Modernism, still using natural and regionally relevant building materials/

Complemented by glass, concrete, steel and other modern materials, with modern design touches.  

It references, complements, and updates the Park Rustic style.

While rare, some parks in the 1960s and since have adopted a truly modernist architectural approach that isn't based on wood, stone, and regionally relevant materials based on the park rustic/park modernism approach.

Value engineering and modular construction.  To save money, today many park structures are purchased from vendors using stock designs.  The designs include rustic, modern, and "not very good."

In local park systems, many buildings are now constructed from cheap materials like concrete block, but augmented with techniques like coloring the block and variegating the shape of the block, to acknowledge the characteristics of the types of original, natural, regionally sourced buildings materials used historically, without the cost of using original, high quality materials.  

The angles of the roof of this pavilion, as well as the design of the pavilion are out of sorts compared to park rustic structures constructed in the 1920s and 1930s.

Not having an understanding of park architectural history, decisions on new facilities may end up diminishing the value of historic park architecture, because it isn't considered a basic element of parks master planning and architectural styles and materials aren't considered as part of the decision making process.

The wall to the left of the Administration Building is shown as constructed of red stone, the Administration Building is red brick.  In the foreground is Parley's Creek.

Sugar House Park architectural history.

In the residential neighborhood, brick is the dominant material for housing and a lot of the historic building stock in the neighborhood and throughout Salt Lake.  Rather than red, typical of the east, a wide variety of brick colors were used.

In the neighborhood and the city, some new commercial and institutional buildings respect the heritage of brick as a building material including incorporation of design patterns, although the color of brick used tends to not reference the styles used during the historic period.

Sugar House Park had been a prison, and the walls were constructed out of the red rock common to Utah.  A bit of the rock remains on site, used in other structures.  

If we can trust the illustration and "fading" of one of the rare color images of the Prison, based on the architectural history of the site we should have settled on red rock, red brick, and wood as the dominant materials.  

This Utah freeway abutment uses red rock as a material for the abutment

and red colored concrete for the beam

Some red rock from the prison has been incorporated into structures in the park, like this memorial, bridges over the creek, and in terraces.

But people didn't understand the argument that red rock should be considered a distinctive and highly relevant building material for the park's structures.  

Sadly, a more recently constructed monument in the park uses white rock.  We should have specified red rock.  But at the time I wasn't clued into the issue.

A perfect example is the choice of exterior building materials for the restrooms at Sugar House Park.  

The brick type and masonry style has zero relevance to either the Park--where buildings were constructed of traditional red brick--or the neighborhood, where buildings are constructed with a wide variety of colorful brick but none like the bricks used in the restroom.  (I will create a brick chart for the Sugar House neighborhood at some point.)

The result is the presentation of a pastiche of architectural styles and materials that is no longer coherent within the continuum of US park architectural history the built environment in parks.

Sugar House neighborhood residential architectural style is Prairie-Craftsman, constructed in a wide variety of different colored brick.  Unlike its use in the Prison Administration Building, standard red brick is quite rare for the neighborhood and for historic buildings in Salt Lake more generally.

It is used today in some new construction, although its use is limited by cost. 

Use of types of bricks common throughout the neighborhood would be inappropriate for the park site because it was represented by the traditional red brick style, which is actually uncommon within the City of Salt Lake today.

Pattern books are models for how to illustrate the palette of appropriate building materials in the local parks master plan.

Image from ""The Art of Pattern is the Legacy of our Grandparents": Koen Mulder on the Brick Bond as a Composition Tool," ArchDaily

Based on a review of historic images, it's likely that adobe and/or stucco (parging) were common materials used on the prison buildings.

How to better define park architecture for  local parks master planning

First is to identify the predominate architectural style of the built environment, recognizing that at the scale of the system there can be differences within districts.  

It's most likely to be park rustic, but could be park modernism, depending on the time period in which the community was built, especially in postwar suburban settings.

The second is to specify in the plan the types of materials that are locally appropriate to the  architectural style and history of the park system and where necessary, individual parks. For example, Salt Lake County parks has farms, more traditional parks, historic buildings, and the type of appropriate building material will vary.

Another color postcard of the prison, showing the Administration building in red brick, but not the walls.

It is on this point where I wasn't as successful as I'd like to have been in convincing board members on adopting architectural design elements and building materials specific to Sugar House Park.  

But at the time my dealing with this was ad hoc and I hadn't thought through or analyzed the history of the built environment of the park site and the neighborhood.  

The Garden Center fireplace uses the "Forest Service style" (Camp Stoves and Fireplaces).

In the initial discussions of the new pavilion and what would be an appropriate design, I did write a long memo about park architectural history more generally.

Now I would say, based on the architectural style of the original pavilions and the interior of the Garden Center which uses wood in the ceiling and has a marvelous stone fireplace (the Garden Center uses cheap concrete block for its exterior), that park rustic is the dominant architectural style for the park.

And that the historically appropriate materials are wood timbers, red brick, and red rock. 

This determination should be included in the discussion of the park's master plan, and extension, in park system master plans.

The third is to address parks and the park system master planning in terms of landscape design and the cultural landscape.  The cultural landscape approach is discussed in this entry, "Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Eight | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework."

Cultural Landscapes

A cultural landscape is a place with many layers of history that evolves through design and use over time. A cultural landscape embodies the associations and uses that evoke a sense of history for a specific place. 

Physical features of cultural landscapes can include trees, buildings, pathways, site furnishings, water bodies – basically any element that expresses cultural values and the history of a site. 

Cultural landscapes also include intangible elements such as land uses and associations of people that influenced the development of a landscape. Cultural landscapes include neighborhoods, parks and open spaces, farms and ranches, sacred places, etc.

-- Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes, The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties
-- Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes, Preservation Brief 36
-- How to Evaluate and Nominate Designed Historic Landscapes, National Register Bulletin 18
-- Guide to Cultural Landscape Reports: Contents, Process and Techniques

-- The Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation
-- The Cultural Landscape Foundation 

Designing spaces (sticky spaces) for use, flexibility: park benches, picnic tables

See the Boston Globe article, "'Sticky' places are urban planning lifelines."  From the Guardian article "The power of the picnic bench":

A picnic table, meanwhile, can be the place for a meeting, a spot to host a party, or even just somewhere to eat your lunch with relative ease and comfort. More than this, they can involve a community in their space and give them a personal stake in it. If this sounds like fanciful, highfalutin stuff, then let me tell you about one picnic bench in particular. 

One day a picnic table appeared outside Pembroke House, a community space in Walworth, south London. It had been left over from a nearby party which had spilled onto the grass outside. Mike Wilson, Pembroke House’s manager, tells me that shortly after the table arrived, things began to happen: “Dog walkers who had passed each other every day without speaking started to sit down at the table for a chat. People waiting for events in Pembroke House to start would sit down to wait together.” After seeing what a difference it made, the bench’s original owner decided to leave it there for everyone to use.

The Pembroke House team now regularly hold their meetings at the picnic table, and rarely get through one without being interrupted by someone stopping to say hello and find out what’s going on. When being interviewed by consultants about their success in the community, Wilson showed them the picnic table, and immediately a neighbour interrupted to tell them what a difference Pembroke House and this table had made to him. The final testament to this extraordinary piece of outdoor furniture is from the local tenants, who were so impressed with the “bench effect” that they secured funding from the local council’s Cleaner Greener Safer project to install more street furniture around the local area. 

The humble picnic table may not be trendy, and may even look a little naff, but it’s cheap, and with today’s disappearing budgets that can only be a good thing. The discerning landscape architect, cautious of their aesthetic can install a designer alternative, but the cheap and cheerful traditional wooden version can’t be beaten. Try it as an easy addition to your local green space or community garden and see what a difference it makes.

A park bench is for reading a book, resting halfway up a hill, or contemplating the view.

I discovered a massive omission in local parks master planning: it fails to discuss architecture and design in an overt way

I am on the board of a park in Salt Lake City.  It's an odd governmental construction in that it's owned by both the city and county, but run (theoretically) by an independent board.  The city and county jointly fund the park.  The county parks department is contracted to maintain it.  So city elected officials seem to think it is the responsibility of the county while the county officials, because the park is in the City, see it more as a city facility.

This has led to a severe underfunding of capital improvements--the two governments run on different processes and cycles for capital improvement funding, and I have been addressing this since I joined the board last year.

Generally, the park grounds are decently maintained, but the structures have been neglected for awhile.  

We are aiming to start replacing the pavilions--there are seven.  And the proposed new structure is stark, severe and pretty modern.  It doesn't fit.  But we need a narrative to explain why.

What it made me realize is that at the local and state level, there isn't a good understanding,  codification, and application of park architectural planning history to parks master planning.  

It never occurred to me, when reading park master plans, that architecture is never mentioned as an element, although of course it makes up the bulk of discussion in specific plans for buildings.

NPS rustic.  Park architectural design across the United States was initiated by the National Park Service through their development of a building construction program in the big Western national parks, starting in 1916, when NPS was created.

The style, called NPS rustic, features natural materials primarily stone and wood, with a focus on the use of regionally significant materials like flagstone or river rocks, cedar wood, red rock, etc.

The basic thrust of the style is to snugly fit buildings into nature and the landscape, rather than for the buildings to stick out. (Separately, the Forest Service has a great Built Environment Image Guide, organized by region.)

The approach prioritizes “architecture that is of and respectful of the natural landscape.” The first statement of policy for NPS called for “harmonizing improvements such as roads, trails, and buildings with nature."

This approach influenced other federal agencies dealing with public lands, especially the Forest Service, which like NPS, developed and published a wide variety of design guidance.

Railroad park tourism.  Park rustic has antecedents in railroad tourism endeavors.  

To promote tourism-based ridership, railroads focused a lot of attention on developing national parks as destinations, and even before the Park Service existed, constructed lodges, hotels and other buildings using the rustic style. (Note that the railroads were a driving force in the creation of the National Park Service, because of how important parks-related tourism was to their business.)

As visitorship increased, the park rustic architectural style influenced people's perceptions of how a park was “supposed to be” presented.  

Furthermore, it is likely that park officials and stakeholders from around the country visited these national parks, experienced the structures and the way they were integrated into the landscape, took these lessons and ideas back home, and aimed to implement a form of park rustic style appropriate in their local situation and context.

The New Deal as a transmission mechanism of park architectural style.  But this was accelerated in the 1930s.  New Deal works efforts, especially by the Civilian Conservation Corps, constructed many parks projects, not just on federal lands, but in state and local park systems too.

This not only resulted in more buildings and exemplary projects, but in the dissemination and adoption of the rustic approach to park architecture, its use of natural materials and its embrace of the landscape at the state and local level. 

CCC did not develop its own design guidance, it used technical assistance manuals developed by NPS and the Forest Service.

Rustic peaked before WWII and the new postwar style of "rustic modern."  The rustic style's application peaked during the New Deal.  Construction of parks projects ended with the onset of World War II and didn't pick up again until the mid 1950s.

The postwar design approach we could call "rustic modern" in that new construction techniques, materials like metal, concrete and expansive use of glass, prefabricated building components, and the modern approach to architecture were joined to the rustic style.

The aim is still to use natural materials and design and site buildings harmoniously within the landscape.  

Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center, Nevada.

Further modernizing park building style through the use of manufactured structures.  Whether they overtly discuss this or not, the rustic and rustic-modern style is the dominant architectural approach to creating park structures at all levels--federal, state, and local.

At the same time, for a variety of reasons local park systems are wont to speed up design and construction by using prefabricated structures.  Such structures have the advantage of lower cost compared to one off construction and are easier to maintain.  Firms producing these structures market heavily to park systems, exhibit at national conferences, etc.

The problem with this approach is that as building design has become more the "architecture of nowhere," with few design cues drawn from the immediate built environment and land use context, the nowhere style is creeping into the design of structures manufactured for parks.

But parks are still very much defined by their landscape, they have distinctive landscapes and land use contexts.  As a result the design of nowhere is inappropriate.  Plenty of parks still incorporate new or replacement buildings that are more rustic than they are modern.

The land use and viewshed context for Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City.

Flickr photo by Steven Vance.

Sugar House Park landscape design and architecture.  Sugar House Park's landscape is decidedly manmade.  The "pond" is a flood control device.  The site, which had been a prison, and I presume pretty flat, was sculpted with hills--it's the only park in the center city that has hills as a unique feature.

WRT Sugar House Park's architecture, I'd call it park rustic pastiche.  

The pavilions are a mix of rustic and modern with wood, stone, and metal roofs.  We have an outdoor education building that is cinder block outside, but incorporates some elements of park rustic inside including a charming stone fireplace, and other brick and wood elements.  

And even though the park was constructed after 1955, it has patios on either side of the creek that look like they could have been constructed by a CCC work crew.

The viewshed is iconic, looking towards the Wasatch Front Mountain Range.  The landscape design deserves to be treated with respect when new buildings are considered.

Conclusion.  Without a clear understanding and codification of a park's landscape design, land use context, stylistic approach to the built environment, and viewshed (if applicable), it's easy to default to "modern" buildings.  

Not having these elements defined in parks master plans makes it hard to maintain a consistent approach to architecture that is in keeping with the architectural and landscape history of parks.  

What I am calling inconsistent = pastiche.

Going forward, definition of design values need to be added to parks master planning processes across the United States.