Park

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]

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]

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]

In some Federal systems, many parks are managed by the sub-national levels of government. In Brazil, the United States, and some states in Mexico, as well as in 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.

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 savannas or open woodlands, the types of landscape that human beings find most relaxing. 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 Derby Arboretum which was opened in 1840 by Joseph Strutt for the mill workers and people of the city. This was closely followed by 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).

A linear park is a park that has a much greater length than width. A typical example of a linear park is a section of a former railway that has been converted into a park called a rail trail or greenway (i.e. the tracks removed, vegetation allowed to grow back). Parks are sometimes made out of oddly shaped areas of land, much like the vacant lots that often become city neighborhood parks. Linked parks may form a greenbelt.

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.

Baku Military Trophy Park in Azerbaijan, which sparked uproar due to display of helmets of Armenian troops and wax mannequins of Armenian soldiers of 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war.[25]

In 2021, following the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, a Military Trophy Park was opened in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, showcasing seized military equipment, as well as the helmets and wax mannequins of Armenian troops.[26] The helmets were reported by international media to belong to dead Armenian soldiers.[26][27] Several international journalists have called the park "barbaric".[28][29][30] Armenia strongly condemned it, accusing Baku of "dishonoring the memory of victims of the war, missing persons and prisoners of war and violating the rights and dignity of their families".[27] Armenia's ombudsman called it a "clear manifestation of fascism", saying that it is a "proof of Azerbaijani genocidal policy and state supported Armenophobia".[31] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan stated that such museums are a widely accepted international practice, and the country has a right to commemorate its victory through parades, parks, museums and other means.[32] Azerbaijani authorities claimed that the helmets were left behind by retreating Armenian soldiers.[33] When Azerbaijani historian Dr Altay Goyushov, one of the leaders of liberal democratic opposition, criticised the helmets corridor, he was rebuffed by local journalists and bloggers who justified demonstrating the helmets, one of them going as far as inviting "all who does not feel well looking at them to go and drown in Caspian sea".[34]